Report: Britain's Daily Mail Eyeing Yahoo Bid

The U.K.’s Daily Mail has emerged as a suitor for Yahoo Inc.’s assets, joining a wide group of interested companies that includes telecom giant Verizon Communications Inc. as an April 18 deadline for preliminary offers nears, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The parent company of the Daily Mail, the British newspaper and global tabloid website, is in talks with several private-equity firms to launch a bid for Yahoo, the people said. Daily Mail & General Trust PLC, whose main interest is Yahoo’s news and media properties, is just one of some 40 players that have expressed interest in the Web portal.

Yahoo has held meetings with Verizon, IAC/InterActiveCorp and CBS Corp., one of the people said. The Mail hasn’t yet met with Yahoo executives. Verizon, which owns AOL and is looking to beef up its digital media and advertising businesses further, is considered a front-runner for Yahoo, according to many executives and analysts following the sale process.


The Mail has been in talks with half a dozen private-equity firms to help finance a bid, including General Atlantic LLC, one of the people familiar with the matter said. A General Atlantic spokeswoman declined to comment.

A takeover of Yahoo’s news properties would markedly increase the Daily Mail’s presence in the U.S., where it launched a version of its website in 2012. Since then, the publisher’s aggressive mix of news aggregation and celebrity and scandal coverage has made it a top-ranking news site with 66.7 million unique U.S. visitors in February, according to comScore Inc.