Yahoo! Inc has completed its previously-announced acquisition of GeoCities Inc and expects to take a one-time charge of about $68m in the second quarter to cover the purchase and relocation expenses. Yahoo says that approximately 100 key GeoCities employees will be retained by the combined entity and moved to the Santa Clara, California headquarters. That means the other two-thirds of GeoCities 300-strong workforce have either been laid off or turned down the opportunity to work at Yahoo.
Tom Evans, president and CEO of GeoCities, has been named vice president of industry relations and will be responsible for working with Yahoo’s senior sales executives and key industry associations. Steve Hansen, GeoCities’ COO and CFO, will serve as VP of the GeoCities operations and will oversee the transition.
The pooling of interests acquisition saw the exchange of roughly 21.55 million shares of Yahoo! common stock for 31.83 million GeoCities shares – a value of $3.19bn, based on Friday’s Yahoo closing price – while 8.6 million GeoCities stock options were converted into 5.82 million Yahoo options.
