After all parties concerned left the negotiation table, Yahoo was sold to Verizon at a $350 million discount from the original asking price of $4.8 billion put out in July 2016.
Earlier negotiations had reported that Yahoo offered a $250 million discount after reports were released showing two events of hackers penetrating the online platform’s security in 2013 and 2014 in which a staggering 1.5 billion user files were compromised.
Announcement of the cyber-attack caused a number of firestorms concerning Yahoo security protocols. Government official were calling for an investigation and there were some concerns that this might have been a deal-breaker in the Verizon buyout when the information came to light last September.
Because of the reduced cost of the buy-out, Verizon expects there will be fallout. One of the expected effects is costs and fines brought on from the investigation being conducted by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Yahoo’s past reactions to the past security failures are being scrutinized to find out if the online platform took appropriate action to curtail further attacks, especially during the time between the 2013 and 2014 attacks.
Also, Government regulators want to find out if Yahoo took appropriate steps to inform its stock holders and users about the cyber-attacks immediately following the events, and if not why they waited five years to inform them.Also, there is the question of damages resulting from the compromised files.
Another concern is the potential for lawsuits from stockholders in the company who stand to lose money due to the discount.
Yahoo will be responsible to cover any financial fallout the incidents
In spite of Yahoo’s troubles over the past several years, and the droppig stock price, they are still the number three online platform in the US.
