Verizon's recently created media subsidiary housing the acquisitions of faded tech brands AOL and Yahoo was given a name that raised some eyebrows — Oath — and there has been speculation that a spinoff might still be coming. Among those who don't get the name and think there are better corporate options include former Yahoo CFO Ken Goldman.
"I have a hard time getting my arms around that name. Sorry," Goldman said on CNBC's Squawk Box Tuesday morning.
But Goldman backs an idea Verizon management has been resisting: eliminating its new brand-name problem by spinning off AOL and Yahoo as a separate publicly traded company, while retaining an 80 percent ownership stake.
"I could tell you what I would do if I were in their shoes. ... I would offload 20 percent," Goldman said.
The former Yahoo CFO said motivating employees at the acquired companies would be a driver for the deal.
"Now you have a public company. You can give stock to those employees, so you can motivate those employees," he said. "Let me put it into perspective. You're an employee at Yahoo. You've been running this independent company for 20 years."
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Goldman said spinning off the media assets wouldn't impede Verizon's ability to use them strategically.
"You can get the best of all worlds. ... You can work the distribution. If you want to put some of those sites directly on your phone, they can do that."
It does not seem likely that Goldman's opinion will sway Verizon management. It has been clear that a spinoff is not in the works. A Verizon spokeswoman referred questions to its most recent earnings conference call, when chairman and CEO Lowell McAdam said, "The questions around Oath — I don't know where they're coming from. There is no intention of spinning out Oath in any particular format. We see the synergies that we expected to see, and we see the future that we had hoped for. ... The integration efforts that are going on, they are on schedule, and so we see no reason to do that, and there's no credible report out there that are otherwise in my view. So I'd be clear about that."
