Marissa Mayer has launched a coast-to-coast campaign to save her job — and New York is her latest stop.
The embattled Yahoo CEO is in the Big Apple this week, pitching her own vision for the future of the slumping Internet giant to deep-pocketed financial firms, The Post has learned.
Looking to buy more time for her stalled turnaround efforts, Mayer has been touting her strategy to aggressively build Yahoo’s mobile platforms, even as she slashes costs by firing 15 percent of the company’s workforce, sources said.
Facing mounting pressure to sell the company from investors led by activist hedge fund Starboard Value, Mayer is likewise angling to refill Yahoo’s depleted board with sympathetic seats as she seeks to reassert her control, insiders said.
Yahoo declined to comment on Wednesday.
While Mayer’s New York schedule is not known, Starboard isn’t among the firms she’s visiting, sources said. Millennium Partners and Mason Capital are among the New York-based hedge funds that hold big stakes.
TPG, KKR and Bain Capital are among the private equity firms that have expressed interest in buying Yahoo.
Nevertheless, strategic bidders led by Verizon have been seen as the front-runners in a sale process begun last week. Sources also said telecom giant AT&T is preparing a bid.
“AT&T will be a much bigger bidder than anyone realizes,” one source said. “They have a very long relationship with Yahoo. Yahoo has powered their websites and they recently extended it.”
Sources said PJT Partners, the boutique firm headed by veteran media banker Paul Taubman, was tapped for its close ties to Comcast, another bidder circling Yahoo.
Earlier this month, Mayer made the rounds of West Coast mutual funds to shore up support in anticipation of a proxy fight, sources said.
In those meetings, Mayer had emphasized her willingness to explore a sale to maximize shareholder value, according to one source. But in New York, Mayer appears to have shifted back to a more “defensive” stance, the source said.
According to some sources, Mayer has been angling to lead a possible buyout of Yahoo’s Web business herself with the help of a private equity firm.
Fortune on Wednesday reported that tech banker Frank Quattrone has reached out to buyout shops on Mayer’s behalf about such a deal.
Such talks are the latest evidence of a bizarre rift that has opened between Mayer and Yahoo’s board, which last week hired Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and PJT Partners to lead a sale process.
Meanwhile, the month-long window for Starboard to nominate a board slate opens on Friday.
“If you were Marissa, it’s logical you’d try to talk to people in advance of that,” said one source.
At least three of Yahoo’s seven remaining board members are saying privately they wish they had exited sooner, according to sources.
One scenario that could play out is an agreement with Starboard to put some of their suggested candidates on the board and keep Mayer in place in the short term.
“By mid-March, she’s going to know that she has no chance,” said one source.