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US telecoms giant Verizon has reached a deal with Yahoo to buy the company’s core internet business for $350m less than originally agreed. Verizon... Yahoo and Verizon Agree $350,000,000 Price Cut

US telecoms giant Verizon has reached a deal with Yahoo to buy the company’s core internet business for $350m less than originally agreed.

Verizon announced on Tuesday that it had agreed to buy Yahoo’s core internet business for a final figure of $4.48 billion. This is lower than the original offer by $350 million. The re-mediated deal comes in the wake of two recently disclosed massive cyber-attacks at the internet company.

Yahoo was forced to admit in December 2016 it had been hit by a large cyber-attack in 2013 which affected more than a billion customer accounts. The hacks, only disclosed after the two companies agreed on a sale, broke records for being the two biggest security breaches in internet history. Yahoo had already admitted to another breach that occurred in 2014 that had affected about half a billion users.

verizon-yahoo

The deal, first announced in July 2016, was put on hold as both companies assessed the fallout from the data breaches.

Under the new amended deal, Yahoo will be directly responsible for 50 percent of any cash liabilities related to government investigations and lawsuits directly related to the breaches. Liabilities arising from shareholder lawsuits and SEC investigations will continue to be the sole responsibility of Yahoo.

Verizon, which bought another former internet titan, AOL, in 2015 for $4.4 billion wants to combine Yahoo’s search, email and advertising technology tools with the AOL unit.

Marni Walden, Verizon executive vice president said of the deal: “The amended terms of the agreement provide a fair and favourable outcome for shareholders. It provides protections for both sides and delivers a clear path to close the transaction in the second quarter.”

Crucially, the new deal does not give Verizon any part of Yahoo’s stake in Chinese online retailer Alibaba.

Yahoo’s final sale price is some $40 billion less than  the takeover price Microsoft offered the company in 2008. During the dotcom boom of the late 1990’s and early 2000’s Yahoo was at one point valued at $125 billion.