Yahoo to spin off Small Business unit with Alibaba stake
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer speaks at a Salesforce event at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, California October 30, 2014.
Credit: Reuters/Robert Galbraith
(Reuters) – Yahoo has decided to spin off its Small Business unit as part of the spinoff of its stake in Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.
Yahoo Small Business helps small enterprises set up and run their businesses online.
Yahoo announced last week about a tax-free spinoff of its 15 percent stake in China’s Alibaba into a newly formed independent registered investment company responding to pressure to hand over to shareholders its prized e-commerce investment valued at roughly $40 billion.
Yahoo had then said the new entity would include its 384 million shares in Alibaba as well as an unspecified “legacy, ancillary” Yahoo unit.
“We’re mapping out additional investments now for our platform and services,” Yahoo Small Business said on its Tumblr page on Tuesday. (bit.ly/1CXtQZU)
The transaction is expected to occur in Q4 2015. The unit will move to SpinCo prior to completion of the transaction.
(Reporting By Kanika Sikka in Bengaluru; editing by Andrew Hay)