Marissa Mayer, one of tech world’s highest profile women when she joined Yahoo, Inc. as CEO in 2012 will be leaving the company when the merger with Verizon Communications, Inc. is completed. The announcement was released Monday
Yahoo Inc. has been plagued with misfortunes since Mayer joined the company, although technically, the tech giant has a series of bad management issues prior to Mayer’s tenure.
Last year’s deal
The deal with Verizon Communications was announced last July, which effectively ended speculations that went on for months. The company at that time said it was still examining their strategic alternatives after their company’s instability. Moreover, Mayer was still very confident that she’ll remain as Yahoo’s CEO.
Downward spiral
Yahoo was launched in January 1995 and incorporated March of the same year. When it went public in 1996, its founders became millionaires and the following year, Yahoo became the second most popular company after AOL. At its peak, Yahoo was worth $100 billion. Verizon Communications is buying the former tech giant for only $4.8 billion.
The future
With that deal, Verizon will be getting the core Internet assets of Yahoo that includes media, email and digital advertising assets. This leaves other subsidiaries to be turned into an investment company for its holdings at Alibaba, a huge Chinese e-commerce company. The spin-off company will be called Altaba, which will deal mainly with Yahoo’s partnership with Alibaba.
Yahoo, according to the brief filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) stated that Mayer, David Filo, a co-founder of Yahoo, Inc. and Maynard Webb, Yahoo’s chairman, would leave the company as soon as Verizon takes over its operation. There are also other members of the board who would be leaving as well, according to the document submitted to the SEC. The document also stated that the departure of these top executives does not have anything to do with disagreements with Yahoo, Inc. in relation to the company’s practices, policies and operations.
Chief executive of AOL’s unit in Yahoo, Tim Armstrong, is being mentioned as the possible CEO once it comes under Verizon Communications. There are reports that Eric Brandt will be the new chairman of the board of the company starting January 9, 2017.
Calls for Mayer’s resignation
Marissa Mayer was one of the first employees of Yahoo’s rival company, Google, which was established in September 1998, three years after Yahoo. Surprisingly, it soon overtook Yahoo, which suffered another business blow with the establishment of Facebook in February 2004.
There have been many calls for Marissa Mayer’s resignation, with the last one happening weeks before the reports of Verizon being interested in the company came out. When she first joined Yahoo, she was called by the employees as their “hope.” However, a series of bad management and business decisions soon soured the atmosphere within the company. Her approval rating went down to 66 percent among the employees, compared to the company’s rivals, whose top executives have approval ratings that reached over 90 percent. There were many employees that resigned, while others did side jobs while in the office. At the second half of 2015, several top executives decided to leave the company as well. Those who remained faced uncertainty and feared for their jobs’ security, even if the company gets sold.
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