Verizon may ditch Yahoo deal after second data breach

In July, Verizon moved to acquire tech giant, Yahoo in a $4.83 billion deal.

Now, after the disclosure of a second major breach, Verizon is reportedly seeking to lower the price of that deal or even to back out altogether.

Yahoo chief executive, Marissa Mayer, and her board will likely be forced to slash the price of a $4.8 billion merger with Verizon if they hope to save the deal.

Bloomberg reports that a  Verizon group led by Tim Armstrong, AOL chief executive officer, is reviewing the breach disclosures and the company’s options.

Shares of the Sunnyvale, California-based internet pioneer fell more than 6 percent after the announcement of a data breach, similar to a previous large-scale hack reported back in September.

Since the Yahoo-Verizon deal was announced in July, some Yahoo executives “are barely coming to work, waiting for a check and for [the merger] to be closed,” an anonymous source was quoted to have said.

Mayer, for her part, “has been acting like it’s business as usual” at Yahoo’s headquarters in Sunnyvale, California.

“As we’ve said all along, we will evaluate the situation as Yahoo continues its investigation. We will review the impact of this new development before reaching any final conclusions,” Verizon said Wednesday in a statement.