Yahoo to reorganise following executive exits
Of course, it only makes sense right? When everyone leaves what do you do?
Yahoo has announced a significant reorganisation after the failure of a Microsoft takeover bid and a subsequent flood of executive departures.
The Silicon Valley company said it was centralising consumer product development in a new division, creating a US region and forming an “insights strategy team”. All three would report to Sue Decker, Yahoo president.
Since Microsoft abandoned a $33-a-share bid for the company on May 3, valuing it at $47.5bn, Yahoo’s shares have plunged and top executives have headed for the exit. Jeff Weiner, head of its Network division, Vish Makhijani, general manager of its search business and Qi Lu, leading engineer for its Panama search marketing platform, are among those leaving.
Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake, founders of the photo-sharing service Flickr, and Joshua Schachter, founder of another acquisition, Del.icio.us, have also quit.
Brad Garlinghouse, a senior vice-president, who wrote the 2006 “peanut-butter manifesto”, accusing Yahoo of spreading itself too thinly, is reported to be leaving the company later this year.
“Yahoo has had a consistent and continuing loss of not just leading executives but also important thought leaders over the past year or two and it seems that the pace and magnitude of those losses has accelerated significantly in recent weeks,” said Scott Kessler, Internet Software & Services analyst at Standard & Poor’s.
via Financial Times