Yahoo’s shareholders have approved the sale of Yahoo’s operating business to Verizon in a vote held today and confirmed in a press release sent out following the meeting.
The company’s stockholders also voted to approve the advisory vote on the compensation payable to Yahoo’s named executive officers in connection with the completion of the transaction.
The final voting results for each of the proposals will be reported on a Current Report on Form 8-K, in accordance with the rules of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Yahoo said.
It added that it anticipates the transaction will close on June 13, 2017.
In February, $350 million was knocked off the agreed sale price, bringing it down to $4.48 billion, after Yahoo disclosed two massive data breaches (affecting some 500 million accounts and 1 billion accounts, respectively).
Verizon-owned AOL’s CEO, Tim Armstrong, has explained the rationale for the Yahoo acquisition being one of combined scale — aka the 1 billion users that Yahoo still reaches being put toward helping AOL reach its goal of 2 billion users, which is in turn about seeking to compete in the digital ad stakes with giants Facebook and Google.
The combined AOL-Yahoo entity has already been christened Oath, at least for B2B go-to-market purposes, i.e. for Verizon to pitch its various brands to others.
Earlier today we reported that AOL-Yahoo will see job cuts of around 15 percent globally as part of the merger — shaking out to around 2,100 job losses across the two businesses.
Following closure of the sale of Yahoo’s operating business to Verizon, and as previously announced, the remainder of Yahoo will change its name to Altaba Inc., and register as an investment company — holding onto its 15 percent stake in Alibaba and its 35.5 per cent stake in Yahoo Japan.
