Yahoo agrees to lop up to $300m off of $4.8bn Verizon deal price

Yahoo has agreed to take a price cut on the original $4.8bn sale of its core business to Verizon as both companies are determined to complete a deal that was jeopardised after the internet group revealed it had suffered two major data breaches, people involved in the negotiations said.

The US telecom group and the California-based internet search company are close to revising the original agreement down by as much as $300m, said two people briefed about the matter.

A renegotiated agreement is the clearest sign that Verizon and Yahoo want to put the hacking crisis behind them and move ahead with a deal that some feared could collapse due to the potential litigation risks linked to the data breach.

Shares in Yahoo rose more than 2 per cent on Wednesday after Bloomberg first reported that the two companies were close to a renegotiated deal.

After the Verizon deal was announced in July 2016, Yahoo disclosed two major data breaches that affected upwards of 1bn users. Yahoo is also facing a probe by the US Securities and Exchange Commission into whether it had properly disclosed the cyber attacks. Yahoo shares initially jumped more than 2 per cent on the news, before paring some of those gains to trade up 1.6 per cent at pixel time. Verizon shares, meanwhile, dipped 0.7 per cent lower.