Friday, February 18, 2005

Yahoo! to buy stake in Indiatimes?

We have been hearing these murmurs for a few days now, but when you have a newspaper like The Financial Times’s Bombay correspondent Khozem Merchant also reporting it, one’s got to give it some attention.

Khozem’s report and our information has it that search engine-turned-comprehensive internt portal Yahoo! is in discussions with Times Internet Limited to acquire stake in the company and/or the Indiatimes portal.The Financial Times report quotes an unnamed senior exec at the company confirming the negotiations. Mediaah! learns that talks have been on with several investors including Yahoo! At the time of writing, the CEO, COO and CFO are said to be in Hong Kong. They have of course visited the United States, Japan and even China for discussions and many biggies have also visited them.

So is Yahoo! going to buy stake? The discussions are on, but we’ll be surprised if it’s just a minority stake, as in less than 10 per cent. The Times of India group can manage without minor mercies.