Just hours after Marissa Mayer announced a plan to spin off Yahoo’s core Internet business, the chief executive gave birth to identical twin daughters.
“Zack and I are excited to announce that our identical twin girls were born early this morning,” Ms. Mayer said on Twitter on Thursday, referring to her husband, Zachary Bogue. “Our whole family is doing great!” She didn’t disclose any further details.
Congratulatory tweets poured in from well-wishers, including Sundar Pichai, the chief executive of Google, where Ms. Mayer used to work; Satya Nadella, the chief executive of Microsoft; Ellen Pao, the former interim chief executive of Reddit; and Frank Quattrone, a prominent investment banker.
Ms. Mayer had revealed her pregnancy in September, at a time when scrutiny of Yahoo was increasing. She came aboard Yahoo in 2012 from Google to turn around the struggling Internet company, but it remains well behind Alphabet’s Google and Facebook in online advertising and other areas.
Yahoo has recently been considering what to do with the valuable 15 percent stake it owns in Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce company. It had earlier proposed a tax-free spinoff of the shares, but the plan ran into a setback this year when the Internal Revenue Service said it would crack down on such transactions. That prompted Starboard Value, a hedge fund, to pressure Ms. Mayer to sell off Yahoo’s core business instead. Yahoo’s board met last week to consider its options.
On Wednesday, the board announced that Yahoo would pursue a spinoff of its core Internet business, leaving the Alibaba stock in the old company. In an interview on Wednesday, Ms. Mayer said she agreed with the new plan because the old plan “was causing a certain amount of market uncertainty.”
Ms. Mayer and Mr. Bogue also have a three-year-old son, Macallister.
Ms. Mayer, who has hired several people to help her care for her children both at home and when she is traveling, has said she plans to take a “limited time away” for maternity leave and will be “working throughout.”
Yahoo, offers up to eight weeks of paid leave for any Yahoo employee who has a new child, including birth, adoption, foster child placement or surrogacy. Birth mothers can get an additional eight weeks of additional paid leave.