Final bids on Yahoo core assets to conclude soon

July 15, 2016 (LBO) - The drawn-out auction for Yahoo's core internet business will soon draw to a close, with final bids for the services, which include Yahoo's search, email, advertising and media operations, due Monday. The board is set to make a decision soon afterward on the confidential bidding, CNBC reported. The sale of Yahoo's business would close out a largely unsuccessful four-year effort by Marissa Mayer, the company's chief executive, to turn around the internet company. Although Yahoo was once the place where many web users began their wanderings, it fell on hard times over the last decade through a series of strategic and managerial missteps. Although Yahoo's properties still draw more than one billion visitors a month, the company accounts for a tiny slice of the time people spend online. The Silicon Valley internet company has conducted several rounds of bidding since February, when it announced that it would explore a sale to separate its struggling operations from its much more valuable investment stakes in two Asian internet companies, Alibaba and Yahoo Japan. The process was eased this spring when the company settled a dispute with a persistent critic, the hedge fund Starboard Value, giving the activist investor four board seats. The bidders for Yahoo's operations include the telecommunications giants Verizon Communications and AT&T, several private equity firms and a Quicken Loans co-founder, Dan Gilbert, who is getting financial backing from Warren E. Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway.