It was earlier this year when Verizon had agreed to buy out most of Yahoo’s assest, which included the Yahoo brand. The pricetag of Yahoo’s purchas was almost $5 billion. Bu this was before the revelation of two massive hacking episodes.
The first data breach that took place was back in 2014, were over 500 million accounts were impacted globally, and was revealed in October. But on the December 14th, news of a new breach came out. This breach occurred back in 2013 and reportedly 1 billion accounts were impacted. Yahoo said previously that the hacking was state-sponsored or conducted by site-affiliated entities.
Before this latest revelation, Verizon was seeking to negotiate a massive ($1 billion) discount off the original agreed purchase price. Now, it’s possible they could ask for more than a billion.
At this point, Yahoo is stuck between a rock and a hard place. If they make too many price concessions to Verizon, shareholders will become angry, and possibly sue. ut, Verizon has more of the leverage and will absolutely require a discount as a condition of going forward.