Verizon Communications Inc has taken over Yahoo Inc, completing a US$4.5 billion deal that is to usher in a new management team to attempt to wring more advertising revenue from one of the Internet’s best-known brands.
Tuesday’s closure of the sale ends Yahoo’s 21-year history as a publicly traded company.
It also ends the nearly five-year reign of Yahoo chief executive Marissa Mayer, who is not joining Verizon. She is to walk away from Yahoo with a compensation package worth about US$125 million, including her severance pay and stock awards that are to be fully vested with the deal’s completion.
Yahoo’s e-mail and other digital services such as sports, finance and news are to be run by Tim Armstrong, who has been running AOL Inc since Verizon bought that company for US$4.4 billion two years ago.
Armstrong is now to be chief executive of a new Verizon subsidiary called Oath, which is to consist of Yahoo and various AOL services.
About 2,000 Yahoo and AOL workers are expected to lose their jobs as Verizon trims expenses and eliminates overlapping positions.
“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,” Armstrong said.
Verizon is not getting Yahoo’s prized stakes in two Asian Internet companies, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴) and Yahoo Japan.
Those are to belong to a newly formed company called Altaba Inc, which is also to inherit Yahoo’s US$8 billion in cash and any money that might have to be paid in various shareholder lawsuits filed against Yahoo leading up to the sale.
Altaba’s stock is to begin trading next week. Yahoo’s stock is to trade through tomorrow.
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
GLOBAL ECONOMY: Policymakers have a choice of a small 25 basis-point cut or a bold cut of 50 basis points, which would help the labor market, but might reignite inflation The US Federal Reserve is gearing up to announce its first interest rate cut in more than four years on Wednesday, with policymakers expected to debate how big a move to make less than two months before the US presidential election. Senior officials at the US central bank including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell have in recent weeks indicated that a rate cut is coming this month, as inflation eases toward the bank’s long-term target of two percent, and the labor market continues to cool. The Fed, which has a dual mandate from the US Congress to act independently to ensure