This is probably good news for Yahoo, not really because of the CEO replacement, but because of the board shake-up. The new board is much more likely to do a deal to sell the Alibaba, etc. assets, shrink Yahoo to something reasonable, and maybe do a sale of the US operations.
Also, Kara Swisher is really a good tech journalist -- you never hear drama about her being reported, but she consistently reports accurate news. I wish the rest of the tech journalism community were like that.
Now there's a real accomplishment, Thompson is gone.
What does this solve? Pretty much nothing. It's unclear to me why anyone thinks a hedge fund manager sitting in Manhattan is going to be able to solve Yahoo's problems, when pretty much no one else has or has been given enough chance to.
If it were just about him lying, everything else would have remained the same except for him leaving. But it's obviously not, as Loeb gets to appoint board members, who have media connections - but remember how having a media mogul run the company turned out last time? http://money.cnn.com/2007/06/18/news/companies/yahoo_semel/
And where are the manhattan bankers and hedge fund managers calling for Jamie Dimon's resignation after the disasterous 2 billion loss at JP?
Yahoo! had somewhat of a chance of making it, but now most likely it will be cut up and sold off in pieces. That's kinda sad.
On the bright side, the CEO cleaned house then got the axe himself. Decent setup for his successor to gain the goodwill of employees as he doesn't need to go through the painful layoff process.
+1 on concerns about the media focus of the company. If Yahoo! was YouTube, I could understand it. But I don't see the reasoning here.
"The company will apparently say he is leaving for 'personal reasons.'"
I wish companies would stop perpetuating this charade. It's rote corporate-speak and an insult to anybody that cares about the story in the first place. How about: "He screwed up. We screwed up. The best course of action for everyone involved is to wipe the slate clean and start over."?
So wait, you're saying that the way to fix a lie and a face-saving cover-up isn't with a new lie to kick off another face-saving cover-up? But it worked so well before!
I suspect there are legal reasons for doing this, rather than PR ones. What amount of "severance" he gets may rely a lot upon the reason for his departure.
From Forbes:
"Thompson, who joins Yahoo! from eBay‘s PayPal — a curveball for a potential spinoff of that unit — also gets a $1.5 million cash bonus and a restricted stock award valued at $6.5 million in return for giving up cash and equity awards he was due from his old job. Both are subject to clawback provisions if he “terminates his employment without good reason” during his first year at Yahoo!."
Obviously resigning due to ethical reasons would not be a good reason.
In the land of corporate bullshit, is spending time with your family considered a "good reason"? If so ... essentially they're fabricating a bogus justification for his leaving as what seems like a payoff. We promise not to go after the cash and stock we'd promised you if you promise to leave quietly without a prolonged legal battle.
Correct I suspect. Something to do with admitting guilt (open up to lawsuits?) vs not admitting anything. It is odd in the article how they discuss "He'll mention an illness he recently discovered" - Perhaps chronic heartburn.
This is one advantage of a B2C vs B2B model. If Yahoo was a B2B company its customers would have stopped doing business with it years ago forcing an acquisition or bankruptcy. However, this really doesn't impact all those folks who have it set as their homepage/email. So it can weather storm after storm.
Hah. It creates services for consumers. It then monetizes those services by selling access to ad networks it's true. My point being that if it sold directly in a B2B environment its customer base would abandon them for competitors due to instability. However, consumers don't change their behavior based on the same types of concerns.
I really wonder whether Loeb hatched something with Zuckerberg after Thompson launched that patent lawsuit. Nothing on the web about this, but could Loeb be a quiet investor in FB? If so, well played.
Also, Kara Swisher is really a good tech journalist -- you never hear drama about her being reported, but she consistently reports accurate news. I wish the rest of the tech journalism community were like that.