UK Edition
Verizon to buy Yahoo for $250m less as deal to go ahead despite data breaches
Verizon will press ahead with plans to buy Yahoo despite the two historic data breaches the internet giant revealed it had suffered last year.
The US telecoms giant Verizon has renegotiated its $4.8bn (£3.85bn) deal to buy Yahoo to pay around $250m less in the wake of the record-breaking cyber attacks, according to Bloomberg.
The sale, which was due to go ahead in the first three months of 2017, was delayed and almost derailed after Yahoo revealed hackers had stolen details from around 1.5bn accounts in two separate attacks back in 2013 and 2014.
While the deal is yet to be finalised, an announcement is expected in the coming days or weeks. It is now likely to be worth around £4.6bn.
Yahoo said yesterday that it was in the process of contacting users that may have been hit by "malicious activity on their accounts between 2015 and 2016", following the breaches in 2013 and 2014 that involved the loss of personal information from one billion and 500 million user accounts respectively, including eight million in the UK.
While Yahoo did not reveal the number of accounts affected in the most recent attack, it is understood that most of the account holders have already been notified. The company first revealed details of the recent breach last December.
As part of the sale Verizon will acquire Yahoo's core internet business, which will split from the remaining units of the business that will run as an investment company called Altaba.
Current Yahoo chief executive Marissa Mayer will stay on at Yahoo to head up Altaba, whose assets will include a 15pc stake in Chinese internet giant Alibaba and 33.5pc stake in Yahoo Japan.
Verizon and the Yahoo spin-off are expected to share the ongoing legal burden of the data breaches.
In the immediate aftermath of the news Yahoo's shares bounced 1.8pc.
Following the disclosure of the bigger data breach at the end of 2016 and reports that Verizon was considering pulling out of the deal, more than $2bn was wiped from Yahoo's value.
The two attacks occurred back in 2013 and 2014 and involved the loss of personal information from one billion and 500m user accounts respectively. It is not clear why it took Yahoo so long to disclose the breaches, one of which was attributed to state sponsored attackers.
Yahoo is still under investigation by watchdogs in the US and UK. In the aftermath of the first disclosure the UK's data commissioner said she would be asking "serious questions of Yahoo on behalf of British citizens". Around 8mn British accounts are expected to have been affected in the first breach of 500m accounts.