Marissa Mayer To Leave Yahoo Board After Verizon Buys Assets

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer will be among the six directors who will step down from the board after the company sells its assets to Verizon — and changes its name to Altaba — the company says in an SEC filing.

Verizon agreed in July to pay $4.8 billion for Yahoo’s assets and real estate, a deal that’s expected to close early this year. That would leave the internet company with its investments in Alibaba Group and Yahoo Japan, along with convertible notes, and non-core patents.

With the change, Yahoo — rather, Altaba — will become an investment company as defined by the Investment Company Act of 1940.

With much less to oversee, the board will be reduced to five members: Tor Braham, Eric Brandt, Catherine Friedman, Thomas McInerney and Jeffrey Smith. Brandt became Yahoo’s Chairman today to “facilitate the transition of the Company to an investment company.”

Maynard Webb moved from Chairman to Chairman Emeritus, and will join Mayer among those departing after the Verizon deal closes. Others leaving: Yahoo co-founder David Filo, Eddy Hartenstein, Richard Hill, and Jane Shaw.

Today’s filing says that the departures are “not due to any disagreement with the Company on any matter relating to the Company’s operations, policies or practices.”

Some analysts believe that Verizon might walk away from the Yahoo deal following disclosures that its services had been hacked over the last few years. The internet company said in December that an “unauthorized third party” stole information from more than 1 billion accounts in 2013. In September, it disclosed that 500 million accounts had been hacked in 2014.

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