Don’t worry, Mom. Yahoo is not changing its name to Altaba.
Contrary to some news reports on Monday, only the part of Yahoo that is not being sold to Verizon will be renamed “Altaba”.
In addition, Yahoo’s CEO, Marissa Mayer, is to step down from its board, but will continue to be CEO.
Verizon agreed to buy Yahoo’s search engine and web portal for $4.83bn back in July. However, Yahoo’s shareholders held on to the company’s lucrative investments – including a 36% stake in Yahoo Japan and a 16% stake in Alibaba – and patent portfolio. This remaining entity has no product and no staff members.
According to an SEC filing released on Monday, that entity will, provided the Verizon deal goes through, be know as Altaba and Mayer, along with five other board members, will resign from its board.
The Yahoo-branded web portal, search engine, email service and news services will continue to exist but will be integrated with Verizon-owned AOL. The Yahoo brands, such as Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Sports, won’t go away, said an AOL spokeswoman in July.
The Verizon deal, which puts an end to Yahoo’s 21-year history as an independent company, still needs be approved by regulators and is expected to be finalized in the first quarter of 2017.
The disclosure of a massive data breach that affected more than 1 billion accounts has raised questions over whether the deal will be finalised.
The company revealed in early December that an “unauthorised party” broke into Yahoo accounts in 2013, in the largest such breach in history. The number of accounts was double the number implicated in a 2014 breach that the internet company disclosed in September and blamed on hackers working on behalf of a government.
Mayer joined Yahoo as CEO in 2012 from Google. She was tasked with turning the company around, but failed to do so. At the start of 2016 the company reported a $4.4bn loss following expensive gambles such as the $1.1bn acquisition of Tumblr in 2013.
It is unclear what Mayer’s role will be if the Verizon deal is completed, although she has said she plans to stay on in the newly merged company, writing in a Tumblr post last year: “I’m planning to stay … It’s important to me to see Yahoo into its next chapter.”