CEO Marissa Mayer defended her progress turning around Yahoo.
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Since arriving at Yahoo in 2012, she boosted maternity leave at Yahoo to 16 weeks but only took two for the birth of her first child in 2012 – drawing plaudits and critics.
Yahoo is scrapping its original plan to spin off its prized stake in China’s Alibaba Group and will instead explore breaking off the rest of its business into a new company. Yahoo did not state who would be in charge of each company or what the company names would be.
Ms Mayer announced on Wednesday that Yahoo plans to spin off its internet operations into a separate company in 2016 or 2017.
Mayer and her husband announced they were expecting back in September, and Mayer said she would only be “taking a limited time away and working throughout” her pregnancy.
Meanwhile, aside from overseeing the spinoff of Yahoo’s Internet operations, Mayer is also creating plans for a cost-cutting overhaul that will possibly lay off hundreds of employees and shed unprofitable products.
In January, when Yahoo announced plans to spin off its $31 billion stake in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, there was talk of how it would liberate Yahoo to focus on its core business. The pair struck up a friendship more than a decade ago, and ultimately formed a major alliance that saw Yahoo purchase 40 percent of Alibaba for about $1 billion. Married to financier Zachary Bogue, Mayer has also been under scrutiny for how she handles gender issues in the workplace.
Marissa Mayer made the announcement Thursday on Twitter.
Some activist shareholders had previously pressed for a tie-up of Yahoo and AOL suggesting that a merger of the two struggling Internet pioneers could produce some synergies.
“There’s always a lot to do on both the homefront and the workfront”, Mayer said. Shares in the new company would then be distributed to Yahoo shareholders, a process that could take a year to complete. “We think this is a reasonable decision, given the considerable tax-related uncertainties around the (Alibaba stake) spin-off”, said Scott Kessler, equity analyst with S&P Capital IQ.
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Mayer and Yahoo! chairman Maynard Webb insist that even though the core assets will now be spun-out as an independent entity, there are no plans to seek a buyer.
