Verizon VZ 38,83 +0,04 +0,10% has completed the acquisition of Yahoo! Unfortunately, we could not get stock quote YHOO this time.. In doing so it combines it with AOL, which it brought sometime ago, to create a new media content company, Oath.
Oath contains the various brands which are part of the Yahoo! and AOL stables, and includes familiar names such as Tumblr, Flickr, Huffington Post, TechCrunch, Engadget, AutoBlog, Moviefone, and Ryot amongst others.
Verizon buys Yahoo! for about $4.5bn, with the remaining rump of Yahoo! (mainly holding the AliBaba stake) called Altaba Inc. This is a discount of $350mn on the original deal, to take into account data breaches in the Yahoo stable. The deal, it seems, does not come with Marrisa Mayer, as she is resigning from Yahoo. Tim Armstrong, who led Verzion’s AOL team becomes CEO of Oath.
“We’re building the future of brands using powerful technology, trusted content and differentiated data. We have dominating consumer brands in news, sports, finance, tech, and entertainment and lifestyle coupled with our market leading advertising technology platforms. Now that the deal is closed, we are excited to set our focus on being the best company for consumer media, and the best partner to our advertising, content and publisher partners.” – Tim Armstrong, CEO, Oath.
“The close of this transaction represents a critical step in growing the global scale needed for our digital media company. The combined set of assets across Verizon and Oath, from VR to AI, 5G to IoT, from content partnerships to originals, will create exciting new ways to captivate audiences across the globe.” – Marni Walden, President of Media and Telematics, Verizon
