Silver Lake – a private equity firm – may be one of several companies interested in acquiring Yahoo.

Bloomberg News reports that if the deal takes place, Silver Lake would sell off Yahoo's Asian assets. The firm would then either try to get Yahoo’s core operations to be profitable or sell them off to another company, Reuters said.

In addition, The Wall Street Journal reported that Silver Lake and Yahoo representatives had not yet met, and it remains unclear what Silver Lake wants to do. Yahoo does not plan to accept a deal quickly, The Journal added.

A number of companies are interested in acquiring Yahoo, All Things D reported. Some have gotten in touch with Yahoo.

In addition, Bloomberg Businessweek suggested that a private-equity firm may try to find a buyer for Yahoo’s shares in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan Corp., which may represent some 80 percent of Yahoo’s market value.

Yahoo portals were viewed by 674 million people in July. Yahoo is the second-ranking U.S. search engine, after Google.

Yahoo recently let go of its CEO, Carol Bartz. She let company employees know about the firing through an email. According to TechZone360 it read, “I am very sad to tell you that I’ve just been fired over the phone by Yahoo’s Chairman of the Board. It has been my pleasure to work with all of you and I wish you only the best going forward.”

Yahoo has been facing a number of what TechZone360 called “structural problems.” It needs to stop and reverse the trend of users who are leaving the site, and has to increase its revenue from display advertising.

Yahoo also has a “strained relationship” with partners in Alibaba, according to a report carried on TechZone360.

Silver Lake was started in 1999. It now has about $14 billion in assets, the company says on its website. Silver Lake Partners is a major player for private investments in technology and technology-enabled industries.