back to article Yahoo! CEO! quits! after! CV! row!

Scott Thompson has stepped down as Yahoo! CEO and has been replaced, for the time being at least, by Ross Levinsohn. Several directors, namely Patti Hart, VJ Joshi, Arthur Kern and Gary Wilson, have also left the company. The departures are a big win for Third Point LLC, an investment company that says it is Yahoo!'s largest …

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  1. LaeMing
    Flame

    Go TPllc

    If more investers (individuals or groups) took the effort to hold directors of the companies they are invested in to account for everything they claim and do, the corporate world might just not be quite as broken as it is!

    1. Gordon 10

      Re: Go TPllc

      Only problem there is the assumption that TPIIc were holding Yahoo to account for the sheer altruism of it instead for example because they had something to gain such as control over Yahoo's board even though they have a comparatively minor stake.

      1. LaeMing
        Boffin

        Re: Go TPllc

        I honestly don't require, or even expect altruism. Holding the board highly accountable is good for the shareholders bottom line. And that is how it was supposed to be, not the 1%er welfare slush-fund that big corporate has turned it into.

  2. Shannon Jacobs
    Holmes

    Third Point is NOT any part of ANY solution

    What Yahoo needs is NOT more greed.

    Yahoo should focus on their key business as perceived by the customer side. How many of you have found better alternatives than Yahoo for almost everything? Maybe I'm weird, but the only residual value Yahoo has to me is the email address.

    What about the spam? Well, I didn't say I actually use Yahoo for email--but if Yahoo really managed to reduce the amount of spam then maybe the value would increase enough that I would use Yahoo email for something other than a registration dropbox on the safe assumption that the Yahoo mail system is worthless because it's full of spam. That's bad enough, but the offensive part is that Yahoo-based spammers are also polluting the rest of the email systems to the point that I suspect the other email companies are looking forward to Yahoo's demise almost as much as I am.

    Yahoo could do something useful, though I doubt they have still have the technical resources or sufficient time before their bankruptcy. They certainly don't have the leadership--and Third Point is NOT going to provide it. For example, it was conceivable that Yahoo could have created an integrated spam-fighting tool like SpamCop on steroids, but something that would seek to disrupt ALL of the spammers' infrastructure, pursue ALL of the spammers' accomplices, and even help ALL of the spammers' victims. Too bad it's too late now, eh?

    The Register should start a pool and publicize it whenever they publish more bad news about Yahoo. How will Yahoo die and when? At this point I'm predicting a total failure with the only bid coming from a spammer who wants the email addresses. Not the worthless Yahoo ones, but the secondary email addresses linked to most Yahoo accounts.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Deck chairs... Titanic

    ...that is all.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Money vs. quality

    To put it simple: you don't need degrees to be good within the fields of ICT. In fact; many of the skills which are really useful in the field aren't even taught at schools. Point is; such investment firms don't look at the company and the quality; it looks at how to generate profit as quickly as possible. Preferably something which lasts and is "good enough" but of either of these options fail then they're also perfectly willing to settle for short term solutions.

    That is; solutions for them and not so much for the company. If the solution would mean breaking up the company and selling of some of the assets which perform below the anticipated scope then so be it. If it turns out that this asset was actually quite important to other parts of the company then well... No one made a mistake; they simply need to sell of even more!

    Now don't get me wrong; if someone lied on their resume and have been caught then its only fair that they're taken care of. But one can also wonder if the company itself added the "extra info" in order to keep the stockholders happy. For example because they recognized that the CEO had the required knowledge and experience, but simply didn't know if (and how) they could convince the stockholders of this fact.

    Commonly speaking; what's good for the stockholders (esp. investment firms) doesn't always have to be good for the company. Usually its quite the opposite.

    1. sam 16

      Re: Money vs. quality

      As I understand it, the problem is that he lied on SEC filings - his report to the market about the company. That's kinda illegal.

      SEC filings include other information like profit and loss figures. If you can't trust what is written there, stock markets can't work. It's kind of important for capitalism that we are serius about enforcing accuracy.

      The later part of your question is more whether we should want it to.

      Activist shareholders have a bit of a record as asset strippers. You buy a stake in a company, and maybe borrow the money to buy it. You need a return quick. Fastest way to do that is to seperate out the profitable parts of the company, detatching them from scary things like pension commitements, and sell them off. The parts becoming worth more than the whole. Profit.

      Is this a bad thing?

      Yahoo has some great assets. Which would have a brighter future as part of a different company. Yahoo Japan would be an excelent purchase for a Japanese TV network or mobile carrier.

      As part of a company that is unable to invest, or just really bad at internal investment, that unit has a sorry future. It will support the worse parts of the company and not make the great products it could with another owner.

      Asset stripping is pretty horrible when it happens to your company, but can be a good thing in the long run, if you are in a good unit. Bad ones are parasites, kept alive artificially by being in a big company, better that they should die.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What, Good Management? It'll Never Catch On!

    Third Point seem to have some ideas about simple, basic good management. A rather novel idea in today's corporate vulture,

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Facepalm

      Vulture?

      That should be Culture

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: What, Good Management? It'll Never Catch On!

      I doubt Loeb can be any part of good management. Declaring more or less point blank that you will destroy the company unless you get a seat on the board is not what I would call good management.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        So,

        "Vulture" it is, then.

  6. This post has been deleted by its author

  7. Rovindi
    Windows

    Shame

    It really is embarrassing to watch these prolonged death-throes of Yahoo! They`ve not been "relevant" for many, many years, in a space where you need to be evolving existing products and introducing new ones on a regular basis- something Yahoo! has been pretty dire with for quite a while. Sure they have email, but as bad as Hotmail for spam etc. Flickr - sure it`s ok, but it doesn`t set the world alight. Social? Mmmm... OK, they make shed loads in ads, but that revenue is in decline (has been for a while) and will, ultimately, not be sustainable in the face of Google, FB etc. Take away that side of the biz and, apart from a few gems AND badly quoting Dorothy Parker: "There`s no there, there"...

    I, for one, think it is quite sad, as there are many excellent people working for this floundering beast, but there is a certain inevitability to its demise. Just a question of time.

    As someone else posted, chairs:titantic...

  8. Patrick R
    Meh

    Don't shoot on the ambulance.

    Ouch, turns out he's leaving with a cancer?

  9. J. R. Hartley

    More! Yahoo! Drama!

    Is this the 37th CEO replacement in as many months? Certainly seems like it. They're FUBAR.

  10. asdf
    FAIL

    $31 a share

    but Yang left the money on the table because Yahoo was worth more on its own. And to think people were saying he was a world class poker player. Epic Fail!

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