Daily Mail parent to join Yahoo sweepstakes

London - Globally the websites attract 14 million visitors a day, putting them among the world's most popular English language news sites

Britain's Daily Mail is in talks with potential partners to mount a joint bid for Yahoo's Internet assets, eyeing a plan to buy the troubled US Internet pioneer to help boost advertising revenues from the Mail's globally popular online news site.
The parent company of the British newspaper, the Daily Mail & General Trust, said on Monday that it was in early stage discussions with several parties about a possible bid for Yahoo, confirming a Wall Street Journal report it had approached private equity buyers to team up.
"We have been in discussions with a number of parties who are potential bidders," a spokeswoman for DailyMail.com said in an e-mailed statement, declining to name the private equity firms or give any financial details.
DailyMail.com and MailOnline are the celebrity-focused news websites of the right-leaning London-based Daily Mail newspaper. Globally the websites attract 14 million visitors a day, putting them among the world's most popular English language news sites.
Buying Yahoo's assets - which range from search and e-mail to news, sports, photos and other properties - would expand DailyMail.com's reach and improve its digital ad revenues, which for its 2015 financial year came in at £73 million ($104 million), a tenth of the company's overall annual turnover.
Liberum analyst Ian Whittaker said a deal with Yahoo would be positive for the company, helping it sell more US advertising and reducing its dependence on shrinking advertising sales from its newspaper business in Britain.
"The US has been the main driver of digital growth for Daily Mail & General Trust, whilst traffic has grown well they haven't quite monetised this traffic as successfully as they would have liked," Whittaker said.