AOL And Yahoo Is Acquired By An Asset Managers, Apollo

…Verizon still maintains its 10% while Apollo Global is the parent company to these pair.

Apollo Global Management reportedly acquires both Verizon’s finest subsidiaries, AOL and Yahoo, for a cheaper price lower than its market value. Apollo paid $5 billion for ownership of these pair, half of the initial $9 billion instalment Verizon paid in 2015.

These companies happen to be sold for cheaps, Verizon still owns a little portion that worth’s about 10% of Yahoo’s stake. Still, Verizon’s chief executive, Guru Gowrappan, remains Yahoo’s chief executive — since its ad tech business is also included in the acquisition deal with Apollo Global.

At the time when Yahoo Answers announced its shutdown, rumours about its parent company’s market value that appears to dwindle and could be available for sale — according to the rumoured information that also suggested Verizon and Apollo’s deal is in its closing phase.

Apollo’s choice of the management team to administers either Yahoo or AOL is expected to influence positive change towards business development including advertisement and other media production.

As a certified asset manager, Apollo has efficiently handled series of investments overtime, including the ownership of Las Vegas’s finest hotel and casino, Venetian Resort. Reed Rayman (Apollo’s partner), highlights the expected business transition, “We are thrilled to help unlock the tremendous potential of Yahoo and its unparalleled collection of brands.”

Apollo recently encountered financial shortcomings, whereby Leon Black, the company’s previous co-founder was caught mishandling the company’s funds with another convicted felon — Leon reportedly paid several millions of dollars to Jeffrey Epstein, which further led to his resignation.

Meanwhile, Verizon acquired these companies accordingly, starting with AOL in 2015, they paid $4.4 billion and another $4.5 billion for acquiring Yahoo. Verizon’s deal with Yahoo also acquired their subsidiaries such as Engadget, Yahoo Sports, and its TechCrunch.

Reed continued, “We have enormous respect and admiration for the great work and progress that the entire organization has made over the last several years, and we look forward to working with Guru, his talented team, and our partners at Verizon to accelerate Yahoo’s growth in its next chapter.”

Three years later in 2018, Verizon encountered a loss that devalued its market capitalization by half, which influenced the company’s name change to Verizon Media Group. In 2019 Verizon then sold Yahoo’s blogging platform, Tumblr for an undisclosed amount — rumour has it that it was sold lesser than the actual market value that worth 1.1 billion dollars.

Verizon has reportedly sold several of its subsidiaries due to improper management — they also sold AOL’s HuffPost. Meanwhile, Yahoo and AOL services intertwine and the market capitalization of these companies has gradually appreciated overtime.