Altaba – the holding company formerly known as Yahoo! – said on Monday it has reached an agreement to settle three lawsuits over two massive cyber security breaches for $47 million.
Yahoo! revealed in 2016 that it had been hacked on two separate occasions in 2013 and 2014, in which hackers made off with personal data including names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, hashed passwords and security questions and answers – all of which compromised all 3 billion of its accounts.
News of the breach impacted the sale of Yahoo!’s operating business to Verizon, who ended up getting a $350 million discount on the original merger price tag. Altaba – the holding company that is essentially the parts of Yahoo! that Verizon didn’t buy – was subsequently targeted with three separate lawsuits related to the breach.
In a statement to the Securities and Exchanges Commission, Altaba CEO Thomas J. McInerney said the company has reached an agreement in principle to settle the consumer class action suit, as well as a shareholder derivative lawsuit (although both are still subject to court approval). Altaba has also received final court approval of the securities class action settlement.
McInerney said all three cases would be settled for a total of $47 million.
In April, the SEC fined Altaba $35 million for failing to disclose the 2013/2014 data breaches.
Meanwhile, in the same SEC statement, Altaba also announced a new share repurchase authorization of $5.75 billion, which will be funded by the proceeds of its sale of Yahoo Japan to SoftBank Group, which was officially completed on Friday.
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