A few months ago we wrote about whether the acquisition of Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) by Verizon (NYSE: VZ) would be the beginning of the end of this popular website. Unfortunately, this turned out to be partially true. Contrary to previous reports, Yahoo's CEO, Marissa Mayer, will not resign her position, however she along with five other board members, including David Filo (Yahoo co-founder) and Maynard Webb (Chairman of the Board of Directors), will step down from the company's board. According to some reports, Yahoo will change its name to Altaba. The Guardian says only the remaining investment company is to be renamed to Altaba, meanwhile the individual brands, such as Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Sports, will keep their name. The current board of Yahoo will keep its 36% stake in Yahoo Japan, as well as a 16% stake in Alibaba and patent portfolio. Both of the above mentioned companies will continue to operate as two separate entities.
Yahoo also continues to grapple with its massive data breach. One of the board members allegedly said that Verizon didn't know about the incident that took place three years ago. This was one of the largest attacks in history and the personal data of almost 500 million accounts was stolen. Hackers gained access to email addresses, dates of birth, names, and even passwords, so it potentially helped them get inside social media pages and bank accounts. This is such a serious matter that the supervisory board is considering whether to finalize the deal. Paradoxically, it wasn't terrible news for investors: yes, the share price decreased by almost 7.5%, but it recovered in a little more than two weeks. Nonetheless, the uptrend itself has continued for quite some time now and it seems the deal will be finalized. We can assume that what may be going on are negotiations to finalize the deal, such as the final price or the date.
A few words about Marissa Mayer: her rescue mission ended in failure. And her attempts at running the company, including the acquisition of Tumblr, a microblogging and social networking site, for over $1 billion, may be subject to questions. Mayer used Tumblr to announce that she would like to still be involved in the next chapter of the Internet giant story. It is not clear what her role would be or what the next chapter bring. It remains too soon to know what exactly lies ahead.