Executives still looking into the deal, it seems. Verizon is once again unsure whether to complete the takeover of Yahoo or not, after the company recently acknowledged a 2013 hack that exposed 1 billion accounts.
Verizon and Yahoo reached an agreement in 2016, but the deal became uncertain after Yahoo revealed that a total of 500 million accounts were exposed following a hack that took place in 2014. Furthermore, a few months later, Yahoo acknowledged another hack, this time one that took place in 2013, and which reportedly impacted 1 billion accounts.
This unsurprisingly made the Verizon – Yahoo deal uncertain, and now carrier executives are looking into it to decide whether the takeover should still go further or not.
Verizon still considering its options
Verizon executive VP Marni Walden has said in Las Vegas that a decision is yet to be made, but hinted that the company is indeed pondering the possibility of giving up on the takeover of Yahoo following the latest news of hacks.
“Unfortunately, I can’t sit here today and say with confidence one way or the other because we still don’t know,” she was quoted as saying. “The merits of that transaction still make sense.”
“I have to have certain facts in order to be able to make a good decision. There’s a lot of stuff we don’t know.”
If Verizon does decide to walk away from the deal, the company must demonstrate that the value of Yahoo was impacted by the hacking news, should this be the reason invoked for such a decision. That could be a little bit difficult given the fact that Yahoo’s shares are growing now, with an increase of 3 percent recorded in afternoon trading to $42.24.
A decision on this takeover won’t be made overnight, and Verizon says it’ll take a few more weeks before an announcement in this regard is made. Yahoo, on the other hand, is very confident that the deal will go through, with a company spokesperson saying that “we are confident in Yahoo’s value and we continue to work towards integration with Verizon.”
Working as a cyber security solutions architect, Alisa focuses on application and network security. Before joining us she held a cyber security researcher positions within a variety of cyber security start-ups. She also experience in different industry domains like finance, healthcare and consumer products.
