Mayer among Yahoo execs not on Oath team
For Verizon, moves are tantamount to a housecleaning
Oath, the Yahoo-AOL creation owner Verizon will debut this year, plans to announce its leadership team Tuesday. And it does not include most of Yahoo’s executive team.
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer will depart in June when Verizon completes the $4.48 billion acquisition of Yahoo that led to the newly-formed company. Also out, according to a person familiar with the matter who is not authorized to speak about it publicly: Yahoo Chief Financial Officer Ken Goldman; Adam Cahan, senior vice president of product and engineering; Chief Revenue Officer Lisa Utzschneider; Enrique Muñoz Torres, senior vice president of search and advertising products; Ian Weingarten, senior vice president of corporate development and Partnerships; and Debra Berman, senior vice president of consumer marketing.
Mayer was expected to leave Yahoo after Verizon finalized the deal and Yahoo ceased to be an independent company, but it wasn’t clear if she’d land with new owner Verizon. It was unlikely: During her tenure, the Internet company failed to realize an ambitious user and sales turnaround in the face of aggressive competition from Google and Facebook, eventually pressured by activist investors to sell its core assets. Two massive hacks under her watch, disclosed last year, further eroded the likelihood Verizon would take Mayer on board.
AOL CEO Tim Armstrong will lead the newly-formed company, named in April. He is expected to be joined by two Yahoo execs — Jeff Bonforte, senior vice president of communications products, and Simon Khalaf, senior vice president of publisher prod- ucts. Bonforte relaunched Yahoo Mail in October 2015. He left before Mayer joined in July 2012 to start Xobni, which was acquired by Yahoo in July 2013.
Armstrong, a former Google exec, is aiming to remake Verizon’s online portfolio of brands — which includes AOL’s The Huffington Post and Yahoo’s News, Sports and Finance units, plus Tumblr — as a stronger competitor for global digital advertising, a revenue source designed to offset Verizon’s slowing traditional telecom business. Yahoo and AOL declined comment.
Separately, Yahoo disclosed the size of its stake in Snapchat-parent Snap. Its 2.3 million common-stock stake is worth about $48 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It also owns 2.3 million in preferred shares.