• Bloomberg, Thursday, December 1, 2011 12:44 PM

By most reports, Yahoo is only looking to sell a minority stake in the company. That, however, isn’t stopping a consortium -- including Blackstone Group and Bain Capital, along with China's Alibaba Group and Japan's Softbank Corp -- from preparing a formal takeover bid. The bid, as multiple sources tell Bloomberg and Reuters, could value Yahoo at more than $20 a share because of tax savings tied to its stakes in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan.

Yahoo’s board is meeting to discuss offers it received for a minority stake from bidders including TPG Capital and a group led by Silver Lake, as Bloomberg previously reported this week. Silver Lake’s bid valued Yahoo at about $16.60 a share, but TPG Capital’s offer was higher, sources say. Regardless, some investors are crossing their fingers that Yahoo is swallowed whole, and at a significantly higher price than the minority bidders are offering.

“It definitely has to be much higher than $16.60,” Di Zhou, a Santa Fe, New Mexico-based analyst at Thornburg Investment Management -- which oversees about $80 billion in assets, including Yahoo shares -- tells Bloomberg.

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