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It is one of the more iconic brands in tech history, but an SEC regulatory filing from Monday has revealed that once the sale of Yahoo to Verizon is complete, the company will be renamed Altaba.
Far removed from Yahoo’s functions at the height of its prosperity, Altaba will operate as an investment company, holding shares in Chinese etail giant Alibaba and Yahoo Japan, according to Investors Business Daily. Yahoo was one of the biggest investors in Alibaba, and that is largely why it stayed in operation while its business elsewhere was suffering.
The name change was not the only piece of news to emerge from the filing. It was also revealed that Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer will resign from the company’s board once the sale is sealed and that Yahoo co-founder David Filo will also step down.
Mayer has been CEO and President of Yahoo since 2012, and oversaw a period of steep decline of the company that led to the sale of the company. It’s unclear right now whether Ms Mayer will have a role in Yahoo’s new setup.
The filing says that the resignation of current board members isn’t due to any disagreement with the company or over how it’s being run.
The sale to Verizon had been thrown into uncertainty by two massive data breaches.
Of course, the sale to Verizon is anything but a done deal – recent revelations of two massive data breaches have called the entire proposal into question. Verizon general counsel Craig Silliman had said that the company had "reasonable bias" to believe that the breach of 500 million user profiles could alter a deal.
The filing cites the "security incidents disclosed on September 22, 2016 and December 14, 2016" as factors that could lead Verizon to terminate or renegotiate an agreement.
However, the filing suggests that the sale’s completion is inevitable – saving any more surprises.
