With the sale of former major internet web giant yahoo! to Verizon Communications looking real imminent, its current CEO Marissa Mayer has, during a SEC company filing on Monday, January 9, announced her intention to resign from the board of directors once the acquisition finally comes through to completion. The broadband telecommunications company is buying up Yahoo!’s internet business for a paltry (business-wise) $4.8 billion, a far cry from the over $100 billion the whole package was worth in 2000, and the $44.6 billion unsolicited bid by Microsoft in 2008 that was rejected by Yahoo!
for what they had believed then to be “substantial undervaluing”.
From Yahoo! to Altaba
The board departure of Mayer, Yahoo! co-founder David Milo and board chairman Maynard Webb is said to be part of a restructuring connected to what will happen to all non-internet businesses under the Yahoo! umbrella when the core internet division has been snapped up by Verizon. These remnant portions will combine to form an investment firm managing its stock on Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba, and will be renamed Altaba to reflect its new status. Yahoo! has explained that Mayer and Milo’s departure from their board of directors was not due to “any disagreement with the company”, or its operation and policies.
Rather, they are part of a downsizing of the existing board to only five directors, post-Verizon sale.
Equities research managing director Gil Luria, from the Los Angeles-based Wedbrush Securities, explains the resignation of Mayer from the board is, understandable due to the transition from Yahoo!, an operating company, to Altaba which is a holding company.
Thus the presence of the CEO on the board is no longer necessary due to there being little for her to do as a director. But at the moment she expresses interest in remaining with the company at least to oversee the handover of the internet segment of Yahoo! to Verizon. And this is all based on speculation of whether or not the deal will indeed be finalized, a subject that both companies involved have been mum about.
No sure deal
In case it does however, and Altaba comes to being, Luria sees the investment company eventually unwinding when it begins selling its stakes in both Alibaba and Yahoo! Japan to interested investors.
The lingering doubts of Verizon committing to finish up its acquisition of Yahoo! internet spring from some sensitive security issues from 2014 that were only revealed last year, where on two occasions hackers breached Yahoo!’s network to steal information from the accounts of over a billion of its members. A senior Verizon executive has anonymously expressed his doubts on the completion of the sale.
