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Yahoo could get a new name if sale goes through

Posted at 7:38 PM, Jan 09, 2017
and last updated 2017-01-10 06:58:49-05

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- If Yahoo follows through with a possible sale to Verizon, you can say goodbye to Yahoo... and hello to Altaba.

Marissa Mayer will step down from Yahoo's board of directors if its sale to Verizon goes through, according to a company filing on Monday.

The Yahoo CEO's pending resignation from the board is part of a broader restructuring. After completing the $4.8 billion sale of its core Internet assets to Verizon, what remains of Yahoo will effectively be converted into an investment company for its Alibaba holdings.

Fittingly, that company will be renamed Altaba, according to the filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Yahoo, wait sorry, we mean Altaba (this takes some getting used to), will then shrink its board to five directors. Yahoo cofounder David Filo and chairman Maynard Webb also intend to step down from the board.

Yahoo says in the filing that none of the board members are resigning "due to any disagreement with the Company" over "operations, policies or practices."

Mayer remains Yahoo's CEO and has repeatedly stated her intention to stay with the company at least through the transition period with Verizon.

"For me personally, I'm planning to stay," Mayer wrote in a Tumblr post at the time of the acquisition. "I love Yahoo, and I believe in all of you. It's important to me to see Yahoo into its next chapter."

However, all of this assumes the Verizon deal actually goes through, which remains an open question.

Since announcing the deal to sell itself last July, Yahoo has suffered two massive security breaches impacting more than one billion user accounts. Verizon is rumored to be rethinking the price of the deal and possibly scrapping it altogether.

Verizon execs have said publicly they continue to investigate the full financial impact of the Yahoo breach.

"Unfortunately, I can't sit here today and say with confidence one way or the other because we still don't know," Marni Walden, an executive VP at Verizon, said at an investor conference this month.