Jon Miller knows a few things about Internet companies and large amounts of money; he was the CEO of AOL for around four years, and is a founding partner of the Velocity Interactive Group investment firm. So try to at least not fall out of your chair laughing when we say he might attempt to buy Yahoo.
Assuming a new report is at all true, Miller’s not making the effort alone, of course. Jessica E. Vascellaro, citing “people familiar with the matter,” writes, “Mr. Miller has been talking to private equity investors and sovereign wealth funds for months in hopes of raising money for a Yahoo deal.”
Jon Miller
In regards to Miller’s financial target, she then continues, “Mr. Miller believes he can do a deal that would be worth around $20 to $22 a share to Yahoo shareholders . . . which would involve raising about $28 billion to $30 billion to purchase the entire company.”
Yahoo’s stock is currently sitting at 11.50, giving it a market cap of $15.94 billion, so all sorts of shareholders and board members would probably be in favor of such an arrangement.
Whether Miller can find people who are willing to put up a lot of cash (or even want to own Yahoo at all) is a different matter, however, and any possible deal appears to remain very far from being done.
