Despite Yahoo Inc.’s recently revealed data breaches, the deal with Verizon Communications Inc. is still on, though some revisions have been made, including a $350 million haircut. With the transaction expected to close later this year, Craig Silliman, executive vice president of public policy and general counsel at Verizon, sees lessons for legal departments in the deal.
Since Verizon and Yahoo entered into the July 2016 stock purchase agreement under which Verizon would acquire Yahoo’s operating business, Yahoo has announced two massive data breaches. First, in September of last year, Yahoo, which did not immediately respond to request for comment on the deal, confirmed that a 2014 hack impacted at least 500 million customer email accounts. Then in December 2016, the company admitted that it had suffered yet another breach in 2013, that had affected more than one billion user accounts. The disclosure of the breaches led to speculation that Verizon might be looking to back out of the deal, negotiate a lower price or have Yahoo assume responsibility for lasting damages caused by the hack.
