The Daily Mail’s publisher is in early stage talks over a potential takeover of Yahoo media business.
Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT) is speaking to private equity companies about financing a bid for Yahoo, which put its core business up for sale in February.
It set a deadline for preliminary bids of 18 April.
A DMGT spokesman said: “Given the success of dailymail.com and Elite Daily, we have been in discussions with a number of parties who are potential bidders [for Yahoo].
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“Discussions are at a very early stage and there is no certainty that any transaction will take place.”
If the move went through, DMGT would acquire media assets Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, as well as the likes of photo site Flickr and blogging platform Tumblr.
According to the Wall Street Journal, one scenario could see a private equity partner acquire Yahoo's core web business (including email and search) with the Mail taking over the news and media properties.
Alternatively following such an acquisition Yahoo’s media and news properties could be merged with the Mail’s online operations.
Previous reports listed other Yahoo suitors as US telecommunications provider Verizon, Google parent company Alphabet and Time Inc.
Yahoo’s revenue has fallen 11 per cent since 2010 and earlier this year the US company cut 15 per cent of its global workforce.
Yahoo has a market capitalisation of $34bn on the US NASDAQ stock exchange. DMGT, which is listed on the FTSE, has a market capitalisation of £2.3bn.
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