Telecom giant Verizon Communications said Tuesday it has completed its acquisition of the operating business of Yahoo for nearly $4.48 billion, with Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer choosing to resign.
“Given the inherent changes to Marissa Mayer’s role with Yahoo resulting from the closing of the transaction, Mayer has chosen to resign from Yahoo,” the company said.
Verizon has combined Yahoo’s online assets with its existing AOL business to create a new subsidiary dubbed Oath. Tim Armstrong, former CEO of AOL, is now CEO of Oath, which is part of Verizon’s media and telematics group.
The company called Oath “a diverse house of more than 50 media and technology brands that engages more than a billion people around the world.”
The Oath portfolio includes HuffPost, Yahoo Sports, AOL.com, Makers, Tumblr, Build Studios, Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Mail, among others.
“The close of this transaction represents a critical step in growing the global scale needed for our digital media company,” said Marni Walden, Verizon president of media and telematics. “The combined set of assets across Verizon and Oath, from VR to AI, 5G to IoT, from content partnerships to originals, will create exciting new ways to captivate audiences across the globe.”
Said Armstrong: “We’re building the future of brands using powerful technology, trusted content and differentiated data. We have dominating consumer brands in news, sports, finance, tech, and entertainment and lifestyle coupled with our market-leading advertising technology platforms. 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.”
