New York: After a failed take-over bid by Microsoft and a partial technical collaboration with competitor Google, a former AOL chief, Jonathan Miller, is now eyeing to take over Yahoo Inc, which runs the popular internet search engine and website by the same name.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Miller, who headed AOL from 2002 to 2006, has been talking to private equity investors and sovereign wealth funds to raise about $28 to $30 billion to purchase Yahoo Inc.
Miller is considered to be the principal architect of AOL's transformation from a dial-up internet service provider to a successful online advertising company.
Stocks of Yahoo, as a result, increased by 76 percent, at the end of trading Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal quoting market observers and experts said it is difficult to raise such a huge amount of money at a time when there is general recession and the banking sector is in a bad shape.
"People close to Yahoo expressed scepticism that Miller would succeed in lining up investors. Given banks' reluctance to lend money right now, financing a deal of this size would be extremely difficult, even from deep-pocketed sovereign-wealth funds," The Journal reported.
"I would think this would be a very hard number to raise even in an effervescent financial market," Roger McNamee, a co-founder of Elevation Partners, a private equity firm in Silicon Valley told The New York Times.
"In the current market, where there does not appear to be any debt available for any cause, let alone Yahoo, I think this has to be viewed as a long shot," he said.
Miller, news reports had said earlier, had worked on the failed Microsoft takeover of Yahoo Inc. Yahoo is now searching for a new CEO, after its present incumbent Jerry Yang announced last month that he is quitting the post. Jerry Yang is the co-founder of Yahoo.
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