The rewards of fee-based businesses justify such prices, buyers say.

Yahoo's push into fee-based businesses, a key initiative to avoid dependence on advertising, also showed rapid growth.

Mr. Semel, like others at the time, tried to move Yahoo away from online advertising and to build fee-based businesses.

And they question whether fee-based businesses - an increasingly important source of bank revenue - will lift earnings.

It had 450,000 subscribers in the middle of 2006, when the company stopped marketing the service as part of a shift away from fee-based businesses.

And he noted that asset management and such "fee-based businesses do tend to reflect different trading multiples in the market."

After the acquisition, fee-based businesses are expected to account for 21 percent of its revenues, up from 13 percent.

Money management firms traditionally command higher valuations than brokerage houses because of their more stable, fee-based businesses.

Yahoo's overall fee-based business, including HotJobs, posted revenue of $83.1 million.

Northern Trust banks derive 65 percent of their revenues from fee-based businesses, primarily asset management for the wealthy, he said.