The Yahoo brand, once an internet name as iconic as Google, might be worth little to young people more familiar with TikTok and Instagram. But it still has value in Japan, where the once-illustrious marquee just sold for ¥178.5 billion ($1.6 billion).
Z Holdings Inc., a unit of Masayoshi Son’s SoftBank Group Corp., agreed to buy the rights to the Yahoo name in Japan to replace an existing licensing agreement. The deal follows the sale of Verizon Communications Inc.’s media division, the bulk of which is the original U.S. version of the Yahoo web portal, to private equity firm Apollo Global Management Inc. for $5 billion.
Yahoo Inc. was one of Son’s early big investments, who built a $100 million stake in one of the original web startups in the mid-90s. He subsequently formed the joint venture Yahoo Japan Corp., which over the years morphed into tech and e-commerce platform Z Holdings as Yahoo sold off its core assets.