Yahoo to change name in Altaba, CEO Mayer near to leave board

Yahoo, one of the Internet's most venerable companies, won't exist for much longer. According to SEC paperwork filed on Monday, it will be rolled into a publicly-traded investment company called Altaba.

Basically, Verizon is paying $4.8 billion solely for Yahoo's core internet business, leaving behind Yahoo's 15% of Chinese retail giant Alibaba and a part of Yahoo Japan, which is a joint venture with Softbank. Those assets will continue to exist in a separate company that will now operate under the catchy Altaba name.

Right after the deal was announced, Yahoo claimed that “state-sponsored hackers” infiltrated its system and gained access to data from initially 500 million accounts, before months later also revealing another billion users had been affected. This led to some reports suggesting that Verizon was thinking of bowing out of the deal, or at least asking Yahoo for a $1 billion discount.

The size of the board will be reduced to five directors, and many key executives will leave, including, as expected, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and Yahoo co-founder David Filo.

It's possible that Verizon may continue to use the Yahoo brand for some of the consumer online services that it will acquire in the deal.
Yahoo is the second early Web giant that Verizon has sought to buy. In 2015, Verizon paid $4.4 billion for AOL.