Stefan Mileschin

The man who oversaw Yahoo's fall from stardom and blocked the sale of the outfit to Microsoft wants to buy the troubled business.

According to Reuters, Jerry Yang has been showing up on a daily basis at the internet company's headquarters in Sunnyvale, California.

Yang wants to do a deal with private equity firms that would take the $20 billion company off public markets.

It would involve both him and Yahoo's other co-founder, David Filo rolling over their stake in the company.

There are several reasons why Yang might want to take Yahoo private. It stopped Wall Street from punishing the company's low growth and its low stock price prevents shares from being used as currency for acquisitions.

It would leave him free to flog Yahoo's international assets, which include a partnership with Softbank in Yahoo Japan as well as about a 40 percent stake in Alibaba.

The spare cash, which would be about $12 billion, could pay off debt and leave Yahoo with just its US operations.

But analysts see Yank as yesterday's man and he will have to come up with something pretty good to pull the deal off.

He still has some influence on the board and staff, but not as much as he did in the days when he told Ballmer to go forth and multiply.

The executives loyal to Yang have since left the company and been replaced by a younger crowd who thinks he was crazy not to sell to Microsoft.

http://news.techeye.net/internet/for...-plans-buy-out