In an email to Yahoo employees, Mayer says that she intends to remain with the company.
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The deal is expected to be announced on Monday, ending months of speculation.
The reported price tag for the deal is well below the firm’s $125bn market value at the height of the dot.com boom.
Finally, the Yahoo sale deal has been clinched with Verizon for $4.8 billion, according to media reports and a formal announcement is awaited. Last year, the telecom company bought AOL for $4.4 billion, acquiring its content sites, including the Huffington Post and TechCrunch, as well as ad targeting technology.
Verizon will merge Yahoo with AOL, under Marni Walden, Verizon’s executive vice-president of product innovation and new business.
Re/code’s Kara Swisher reported late Saturday that Yahoo!
Yahoo and Verizon did not immediately return requests for comment.
The deal would see Verizon pay $US4.8 billion ($6.4 billion) for Yahoo’s core business, excluding its successful Asian ventures – a 15 per cent stake in the Chinese online marketplace Alibaba and its 35 per cent holding in Yahoo Japan – as well as some patents.
Stanford graduate students Jerry Yang and David Filo created Yahoo in 1994, making it the destination of choice for many during their first forays online. By 2008, Yahoo was warding off a controversial takeover bid from Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) and having a hard time to specify its mission. After the sale to Verizon, shareholders will be left with around $41 billion in investments in Alibaba, along with Yahoo! It instead chose to explore a sale of its core assets, spurred on by activist hedge fund Starboard Value. Google will control almost 39 per cent of a projected $69bn in digital ad revenues in the USA this year, according to eMarketer, while Facebook will take 15 per cent. Verizon-AOL will have 1.8 per cent and adding Yahoo would bring its share to 5.2 per cent. She brought in TV journalist Katie Couric as Yahoo’s “global anchor”.
Yahoo shares were up about 1 percent at 1 p.m. EDT to $39.29.
Before, Yahoo was valued at around $125 billion but that value declined sharply over the years as more companies started to appear and take over the Internet business. Verizon will add Yahoo to one of its biggest acquisition after buying AOL a year ago for $4.4 billion.
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As per earlier reports, AT&T and Quicken Loans founder Dan Gilbert, as well as buyout firms Vector Capital Management and TPG were also active in the bidding process till the end.
