Some Yahoo investors have defected and encouraged AOL to merge with Yahoo

At least two of Yahoo's TOP10 shareholders are dissatisfied with Ms. Mayer's Marissa, according to Reuters, after activist investors encouraged Yahoo's CEO, Marissa Mayer, to combine US online (AOL). and has been directly linked to AOL's CEO Armstrong (Tim Armstrong), hoping that the latter will be able to actively seek to merge with Yahoo, and in the future at the helm of the merged new company.

Before the measures were taken, the activist investment agency, Starboard Value LP ("starboard"), also wrote to Ms. Mayer, hoping to consider a takeover of AOL and unlock the stakes in some of the Asian companies that Yahoo currently holds.

Yahoo investors said Mr. Armstrong accepted Yahoo shareholders ' proposal and acknowledged that there were many potential benefits to the deal. However, according to people familiar with the matter, Mr. Armstrong may have underestimated the possibility of the deal, after all, two companies have yet to engage in any dialogue, and Mr Armstrong has made it clear that he will only consider a friendly deal.

Both AOL and Yahoo declined to comment, and the proportion of Yahoo shares held by shareholders who made the request to Mr Armstrong is unclear.

According to two Yahoo Top10 shareholders, they have interviewed Armstrong in recent weeks to discuss the possibility of a merger with Yahoo, two shareholders who believe the two companies could save about $1.5 billion in operating costs after the merger.

Starboard has expressed the hope that Yahoo will split the web site and email business and merge them into AOL, a move that will turn Yahoo into a stand-alone company that holds only a partial stake in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan, which will doubtless meet the shareholders who want to make a fortune on those assets. In addition, Starboard was active on AOL's board, but in 2012 tried to exempt three of AOL directors from the "fighting" defeat.

Yahoo's current market capitalisation of about 47 billion U.S. dollars, of which only Alibaba shares a value of up to 44 billion U.S. dollars, so Yahoo's current share price and its core business relationship is not obvious. Some investors believe that Yahoo's current website and e-mail business value of about 7 billion U.S. dollars.

Former Google executive Armstrong began to run AOL in 2009, and has managed to get the company out of the doldrums through a series of measures, including the acquisition of a video advertising platform, Adap.tv, which has grown by about one to 3.5 billion dollars during its tenure.

In Yahoo, Ms. Mayer's share price has doubled three times times since she became CEO in July 2012, but analysts say it is largely a quick appreciation of the assets of its Asian company, and Mayer wants investors to be patient with her Yahoo recovery plan.

Some investors who support the merging of AOL want Ms. Mayer to focus on the acquisition's position in the company's strategy, even though Yahoo has recently acquired a video advertising platform BrightRoll (Adap.tv's rival) for a 640 million dollar price. The investors believe that the new company, which is merged with AOL, will be a strong competitor for Google and Facebook in areas such as video interfaces and digital advertising, but there are also analysts who believe that whether the deal will lead to growth in the business of the new company would bring more problems and risks to the two companies.

Translator: Xingwen

(Responsible editor: Lvguang)