Verizon appears to have lost interest in following through on its $4.8 billion acquisition of Yahoo, according to a report Thursday by Claire Atkinson in The New York Post. However, the report notes that Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam and his general counsel, Craig Silliman, appear to be giving two different versions of the company’s position.
“The telecom boss appeared to be totally unaware of something his general counsel would say Thursday: that Verizon believes it has a good case that the unprecedented hack of 500 million Yahoo accounts presented a material adverse condition (MAC) on Verizon’s $4.8 billion acquisition of the Web portal’s core assets,” Atkinson writes.
She adds: “If Verizon can successfully claim a MAC, it can negotiate to exit the deal or get a discounted price.”
News broke more than a week ago that Verizon was unhappy about the lack of disclosure of the hack by Yahoo, and was considering trying to knock down the purchase price by $1 billion.
“Bizarrely, McAdam on Monday played down the impact of the Yahoo hack, saying it is the ‘state of the way the Internet operates these days,'” Atkinson reports, adding that McAdam “appeared to commit Verizon to moving ahead with the purchase.”
Verizon should get out fast. Yahoo members are dropping off quickly. Yahoo email is impossible to log into and the customers are leaving in droves. Yahoo has no real support and their answer is download the app. But the app isn’t accepting the passwords any better than the website or the mail app on iPhone. On top of that, many of these people have had their account for 15 years or more and have changed their recovery phone # and backup email and don’t remember their security questions if they set any. In my job I talk to dozens of people a week with these issues, not to mention the fear of hacking This is much bigger for Yahoo than they are letting on.