Not too long ago Verizon reached a $4.8 billion deal to acquire Yahoo but a lot has been made public since then. Yahoo confirmed two weeks ago that it was the victim of a massive cyberattack in 2014 which compromised usernames and passwords of more than 500 million accounts. It has also been revealed recently that Yahoo was scanning incoming emails of all of its users for the government. These latest developments have reportedly pushed Verizon to consider the price and it’s now believed to be asking for a $1 billion discount on the deal.
Verizon thought that acquiring Yahoo and merging it with its AOL unit will provide it with enough scale to challenge Google and Facebook in the digital ad market.
However, the lack of disclosure on Yahoo’s part appears to be troubling Verizon. AOL unit’s boss Tim Armstrong is said to be pretty upset about the lack of disclosure and is weighing options which might include backing out of the deal completely or reducing the price.
The New York Post reports that the demand for a $1 billion discount is being pushed because Verizon now believes that Yahoo’s value has been diminished. Armstrong reportedly flew to the West Coast to personally meet with Yahoo executives and make the case for a price reduction. Yahoo is reportedly not budging, telling Verizon that a deal is a deal and that it has no legal recourse to push a discount now.
Yahoo and Verizon have not officially commented on this report as yet.