(Reuters) - Yahoo Inc (YHOO.O) Chief Executive Scott Thompson is stepping down after a controversy over a fake computer science college degree on his biography, the third CEO to leave the company in three years, according to a source familiar with the situation. The move is a victory for hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb of Third Point LLC, which is Yahoo's largest outside shareholder and brought the discrepancy in Thompson's educational background to light. Thompson's interim replacement, effective immediately, will be Yahoo's global media head Ross Levinsohn, the source said. Yahoo was not immediately available for comment. Emails sent to Thompson's official Yahoo
Read MoreHere is the first missive to Yahoo’s troops from new interim CEO Ross Levinsohn, which I obtained from 653 sources at the company. (Joke alert! Sort of!) “Importantly, today’s announcements lay to rest the unfortunate and serious distractions surrounding our senior leadership and the composition of our Board going forward,” said Levinsohn, who has been head of global media at the Silicon Valley Internet giant, in part. “In spite of the very bumpy road we’ve traveled, we are achieving genuine and meaningful successes in the marketplace every day and heading in the right direction.” Well, it’s a direction at least, given the recent controversy after it was revealed that former CEO Scott Thompson had a fake computer science degree on his resume. Levinsohn was named today as the next leader of Yahoo, which has had a revolving door of CEOs in recent years, in a massive shake-up at and which includes many board changes and also the settlement of a potentially nasty proxy fight. Enjoy: Yahoos – We have just announced very significant news regarding the leadership of our Company. The Board of Directors has appointed Fred Amoroso Chairman of the Board and has asked me to take on the role of interim Chief Executive Officer, to replace Scott Thompson, who has left the Company. In addition, the Board also announced that it has reached a settlement with our major shareholder Third Point LLC, enabling us to avoid a proxy contest.
Read MoreYahoo’s embattled CEO Scott Thompson (pictured here) is set to step down from his job at the Silicon Valley Internet giant, in what will be dramatic end to a controversy over a fake computer science degree that he had on his bio, according to multiple sources close to the situation. The company will apparently say he is leaving for “personal reasons.” But the evolving crisis — which is just over a week old — centered on his botched resume and how he handled the thorny issue is clearly the key reason for the abrupt leaving. Thompson’s likely replacement on an interim basis will be Yahoo’s global media head Ross Levinsohn , who most recently also ran its Americas unit, including its advertising sales. In addition to the management upheaval, Yahoo’s board is closing in on a settlement with the man who discovered Thompson’s misstep, activist shareholder Daniel Loeb of Third Point, said sources. The situation could change, since Yahoo’s full board still has to meet this morning to officially approve the sweeping changes at the long-troubled company. But, if it is, this development goes a long way toward fixing some of what has been ailing Yahoo recently. And it’s also a stunning victory for Loeb, since the pugnacious hedge fund investor is set to get three board seats from a slate proposed by him as part of a proxy fight aimed at Yahoo. The new Yahoo directors will be media exec Michael Wolf and turnaround specialist Harry Wilson. Loeb’s fourth selection — former NBC head Jeff Zucker — will withdraw. The five current Yahoo directors — who were to step down at the company’s annual meeting this summer — will leave the board effective immediately, sources said, to make way for the Third Point selections. Finally, Yahoo’s recently added director Fred Amoroso will be named chairman of the board. Amoroso is the director who has been conducting the investigation into the issues raised by Loeb about how the fake academic credentials got in Thompson’s public bios, as well as in Yahoo’s regulatory filings, and also the hurried circumstances around his hiring in January. Those mysteries — read, screw-ups — might never be solved now, although Thompson made a convoluted attempt to explain it all in two awkward employee meetings at the end of last week, in which he blamed a headhunting firm for introducing the mistake when he was being hired for a job at eBay in the mid-2000 timeframe. That company, Heidrick and Struggles, slapped back with an internal memo noting that Thompson’s claim was not “verifiably not true.” Sources said that Heidrick told Yahoo’s board that it was in possession of a resume submitted by Thompson that he had apparently submitted showing the inaccurate CS degree on it
Read MoreLast week, I posted an audio recording of Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson, from a radio interview he did in early 2009, in which he did not deny he had a computer science degree when the host of the show stated it as a fact as a key part of her question. Thompson did not have such an academic credential. The host of the TechNation, Moira Gunn, sat down with me yesterday to further explain in the video interview below why she asked the question that particular way to Thompson. In the video and in emails to me, Gunn firmly asserts that she did so, because Thompson and she had a conversation about their CS degrees leading up to the interview and also kibitzed about the importance of such an education in the pre-roll of the interview. (That audio is also embedded below, along with the part of the interview itself in which he does not correct Gunn’s assertion that he has a CS degree.) At the time of the interview, Thompson was president of eBay’s PayPal payments unit and was there to talk about its growth. As I previously wrote: At the end of the largely charming interview, Moira Gunn asked him a direct question about his college degrees, specifically noting they were in accounting and computer science. “Your bachelor’s degree is in accounting and computer science. Now, from both of those, I mean that’s, that’s pretty obvious that’s PayPal,” said Gunn. “What are the most important things you learned?” “Yeah,” begins Thompson, failing to correct her at all on the fact that he does not actually have a computer science degree — only one in accounting. He then went even further, touting his early tech training at Stonehill College, near Boston, which did not offer a computer science degree and had only one basic computer course at the time he went there, from 1975 to 1979. “And that’s really the background that I have, and it started back in my college days, and I think that’s really the wonderful part of being an engineer is you think that way,” said Thompson. In the most generous interpretation, it’s not quite clear whether Thompson was saying “Yeah” to her statement of his academic credentials, or if he was not actually listening. But it’s a careless oversight on his part not to have corrected her about the degrees, which could also be said about a computer science degree being present on his bio for more than a half-dozen years at eBay and later at Yahoo without some notice by him. Because while Thompson has had a long career as a tech exec, as well as a stint as a CIO, academically speaking, a computer science degree did not happen in his college days nor did he graduate as an engineer. While it is entirely possible that Thompson did not correctly grok what Gunn was saying, it seems pretty clear that he implied his college background was in tech and he was an engineer. It is true that Thompson did take some computer science classes at Stonehill
Read MoreDaniel Loeb of Third Point — the activist shareholder who set off a management crisis at Yahoo last week with the revelation that new CEO Scott Thompson had added a fake computer science degree to his bio — will be onstage at a high-profile investor confab in Las Vegas this afternoon. It’s his first public appearance since Loeb scored a direct hit on Yahoo in his ongoing proxy fight against the company — a first casualty yesterday with the stepping down of Yahoo director Patti Hart , who vetted Thompson. With one win like that, can Loeb resist using the panel, titled “Titans of Wall Street: Insight & Strategies for Capitalizing on Today’s Markets” to strafe Yahoo a bit? Sources said Loeb is prepping some reaction to Thompson’s apology on Monday for the borked bio becoming a “distraction” (but not, oddly, for the mistake itself), as well as an offer to work with the Yahoo board on a new CEO choice. Loeb has called for Thompson’s firing over the bio fibbing. But the pugnacious investor will likely also be asked to opine on the situation so far at the off-the-record SkyBridge Alternatives Conference , which describes itself as “committed to facilitating balanced discussions and debates on macro-economic trends, geo-political events and alternative investment opportunities within the context of a dynamic global economy.” What will be more interesting is to see in the days ahead — even as the Yahoo board investigates how the false information about Thompson’s academic credentials got on that bio, as well as in regulatory filings — is if Loeb can be more than just a bomb-thrower and put forth a more specific and substantive plan for the long-troubled company than he has so far. It’s not a requirement, of course, since Loeb is only seeking board seats and is not lobbying to be CEO, whose job it is to formulate a cogent strategy. But other Yahoo shareholders he is seeking to convince to join him in his proxy battle probably want more than “Yahoo stinks” from him at some point. Still, for today at about 1:35 pm PT when Loeb is scheduled to speak, it’s probably a good bet to expect some less-than-pretty noise from Sin City.
Read MoreOn Friday, Third Point’s Dan Loeb — the activist shareholder who is waging an ever-nastier proxy battle against Yahoo — said in a letter regarding the inexplicable errors in the resume of its CEO Scott Thompson that he would take “further action” if he did not get answers. Let me translate that for Yahoo and any other interested observers: Come Monday, the Silicon Valley Internet giant is likely to be on the receiving end of an official lawsuit demanding all the notes and records related to the hiring of Thompson. Presumably, Loeb hopes that if he gets ahold of the material on the quick hiring of the former president of eBay’s PayPal payments unit that it will show a sloppy vetting by the board, which led to it not catching inaccurate educational information about Thompson. Last week, Loeb discredited Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson’s academic credentials and credibility by showing that his bio listed a computer science degree, even though he never obtained one while at Stonehill College. Perhaps most problematically, that data got into official regulatory filings Yahoo made. After proven correct, Loeb than quickly lobbed in another letter, making an explicit legal threat to get the resume information: Third Point will consider it grounds for further action if the Board does not take the following steps by Noon EDT on Monday, May 7th: 1) Publicly reveal the process by which it vetted Mr. Thompson as a potential CEO candidate. This disclosure should include the release of all minutes of any meeting at which Mr. Thompson’s candidacy was discussed and any reports or other materials upon which directors relied to evaluate Mr. Thompson’s candidacy. 2) Disclose whether any Board member, including Maynard Webb, who has long-standing ties to Mr. Thompson, and Ms.
Read MoreYahoo has been working on a new deal to sell a portion of its stake in Alibaba Group back to the Asian company, and a transaction could be completed within weeks, people familiar with the matter said. At the same time, they cautioned, the two parties have failed to strike a deal numerous times in the past, and there is no guarantee a deal will be reached this time. Read the rest of this post on the original site
Read MoreOf course, the Yahoo internal memo for the Yahoo internal crisis of the week! Here is CEO Scott Thompson’s email today to employees about the controversy around the fact that he does not have a computer science degree , as described in his bio in Yahoo’s regulatory filings. Oh, just read it: From: Scott Thompson Sent: Friday, May 04, 2012 4:03 PM To: all-worldwide@yahoo-inc.com Subject: Staying Focused Yahoos – I am sure you have seen the reports of questions raised regarding my undergraduate degree. As we said yesterday, the board is reviewing the matter and, upon completion of its review, will make an appropriate disclosure to shareholders. In the meantime, I’m doing what I hope all of you are doing — staying focused on our customers, our shareholders, our team and moving Yahoo! forward, fast.
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