Last month, a rumor that AOL was interested in a merger with Yahoo was pretty quickly rebuffed by sources inside Yahoo. But apparently AOL CEO Tim Armstrong doesn't take "No" for an answer. Reuters reports via unnamed sources that Armstrong has been meeting with AOL shareholders in past two weeks to push for an idea to sell AOL to Yahoo. The article quotes one of the unnamed shareholders as saying, "The focus in the meeting has gone from a year ago of being around the fundamentals to now being how could you carve this up, what are separate assets worth, are there ways to sell off the business to extract value from them."
Armstrong has reportedly told the stockholders that a merger between AOL and Yahoo could result in a total savings of between $1 billion and $1.5 billion. The savings would come from shutting down web sites that duplicate content along with data centers that could be closed due to overlapping locations. A combined AOL-Yahoo merger might also be more attractive to big ad companies seeking to make major ad purchases.
Yahoo has been rumored to be taking inquires from other companies seeking to purchase the company after it kicked out its latest CEO Carol Bartz in September. Microsoft has been said to be mulling over a bid to acquire Yahoo. Microsoft tried once before to buy the company a few years ago but the two organizations were unable to agree on a price. Yahoo has also been rumored to be thinking about taking the company private.
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