News Corporation (NYSE: NWS) is in talks with Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) in a deal that would combine the company's MySpace site and other Internet sites with the pioneering Internet portal, according to The Wall Street Journal [subscription required].
Under the terms of the deal, News Corp. would get a more than 20% stake in Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company. No doubt that Rupert Murdoch, New Corp's CEO, would want to buy all of Yahoo at some point, probably after it's completed the integration of Dow Jones, publisher of the Journal.
For now, the ball is in the court of Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT), whose $44.6 billion unsolicited bid for Yahoo was rejected as being being too low. Unless News Corp is prepared to buy the whole thing, Yahoo will have little choice but to agree to Microsoft's buyout. Murdoch, though, may have a few tricks up his sleeve.
"News Corp. has been reaching out to private equity firms since the day Microsoft's bid was first announced, according to one person familiar with the matter," the paper said. "The company had been originally reluctant to press forward with a deal until waiting for a sign from the Yahoo board that they were interested, according to another person."
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