Yahoo Chief Scott Thompson Quits
The soap opera surrounding the now former CEO of Yahoo! Scott Thompson continued over night. Last week Yahoo! director Patti Hart resigned from the board after bungling the checks into Mr Thompson's resume.
The inevitable happened over night, with the Guardian reporting that Mr Thompson resigned on Sunday evening as Yahoo! attempted to draw a line under the affair caused by the claim made by Mr Thompson that he held a degree in computer science that was not strictly speaking true.
After a board meeting on Sunday morning, the company announced that Thompson, who has led the internet services firm for less than six months, would be replaced by Ross Levinsohn with immediate effect.
Whether Levinsohn can turn the company around however has to be questioned, as it was Levinsohn that oversaw the purchase of Myspace by News Corp in 2005 for a fee that turned out to be horribly inflated.
Joining Thompson and Hart was former chairman Roy Bostock, who also quit to be replaced by Fred Amoroso.
Adding to the melodrame, the Wall Street Journal revealed today that Mr Thompson has been diagnosed with thyroid cancer. He made the announcement to the Yahoo! board prior to his resignation.
It caps a tumultuous time for the former search engine giant, with Thompson barely six months into the post, after replacing Carol Bartz, Yahoo's previous chief executive, who claimed the company had "fucked her over" after she failed to turn the struggling internet service firm round.
Clearly the board hope that their actions will draw a line under the matter and allow them to focus afresh on regaining their former glory.
"The board is pleased to announce these changes and the settlement with Third Point, and is confident that they will serve the best interests of our shareholders," Amoroso said in a statement on Sunday night.
Despite a massive online presence, Yahoo has been struggling for years to keep up with Google and Facebook. Yahoo's share of overall US online ad revenues, which reached 15.7% in 2009, declined to just 9.5% last year, according to eMarketer.
While the online advertising market is expected to grow 23.3% to $39.5bn this year, Yahoo's share of revenues will fall further to 7.4%, eMarketer estimates.
Follow Technorati