Yahoo Inc chairman Roy Bostock fired CEO Carol Bartz over the telephone on Tuesday, ending a tumultuous tenure marked by stagnation and a rift with Chinese partner Alibaba (阿里巴巴).
Chief financial officer Tim Morse will step in as interim CEO, and the company will search for a permanent leader to spearhead a battle in online advertising and content with rivals Google Inc and Facebook.
Shares in Yahoo jumped 6 percent in after-hours trading to US$13.70 after closing at US$12.90 on the NASDAQ on Tuesday. They are scarcely higher than where they were when Bartz first took the reins in January 2009, with hopes of reviving stalled growth and competing with up-and--coming rivals.
Photo: Reuters
On Tuesday, her efforts were abruptly halted after Bostock called with the bad news.
“I am very sad to tell you that I’ve just been fired over the phone by Yahoo’s chairman of the board. It has been my pleasure to work with all of you and I wish you only the best going forward,” the outspoken CEO said in a two--sentence e-mail to employees.
The turn of events surprised few Wall Street observers who had tracked a rising torrent of -criticism and watched revenue growth falter and sputter out.
Some analysts said Bartz’s departure signaled the company had run out of options after failing to dominate the advertising and content markets and handing over its search operations to Microsoft Corp.
That partnership, under which Microsoft handles search for Yahoo’s Web sites and keeps a portion of ad revenue, appears to favor the software company at Yahoo’s expense.
Yahoo is still one of the most popular destinations on the Internet, but faces increasing competition from social networking service Facebook and from Google, which has a market value of US$170 billion, 10 times more than Yahoo.
Yahoo said a new executive leadership council would help Morse in managing day-to-day operations, as well as supporting “a comprehensive strategic review” to position the company for growth.
The decision to oust Bartz was reached by a unanimous vote of Yahoo’s eight independent directors late last week, according to a person close to the company.
Bartz and co-founder Jerry Yang (楊致遠), who are also on the board, did not participate in the vote, the person said.
Yahoo is worth about US$16 billion, with much of that ascribed to its roughly 40 percent stake in Alibaba, the parent company of Web sites including Alibaba.com and Taobao (淘寶). Yahoo also owns a stake in Yahoo Japan, along with Japanese mobile company Softbank.
DAMAGE REPORT: Global central banks are assessing war-driven inflation risks as the law of unintended consequences careens around the world, spiking oil prices Central banks from Washington to London and from Jakarta to Taipei are about to make their first assessments of economic damage after more than two weeks of conflict between the US and Iran. Decisions this week encompassing every member of the G7 and eight of the world’s 10 most-traded currency jurisdictions are likely to confirm to investors that the specter of a new inflation shock is already worrying enough to prompt heightened caution. The US Federal Reserve is widely expected to do exactly what everyone anticipated weeks ahead of its March 17-18 policy gathering: hold rates steady. The narrative surrounding that
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) share of the global foundry market rose to almost 70 percent last year amid booming demand for artificial intelligence (AI), market information advisory firm TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said on Thursday. The contract chipmaker posted US$122.54 billion in revenue, up 36.1 percent from a year earlier, accounting for 69.9 percent of the global market, TrendForce said. Its share was up from 64.4 percent in 2024, it said. TSMC’s closest rival, Samsung Electronics, was a distant second, posting US$12.63 billion in sales, down 3.9 percent from a year earlier, for a 7.2 percent share of the global market. In the
HEADWINDS: The company said it expects its computer business, as well as consumer electronics and communications segments to see revenue declines due to seasonality Pegatron Corp (和碩) yesterday said it aims to grow its artificial intelligence (AI) server revenue more than 10-fold this year from last year, driven by orders from neocloud solutions clients and large cloud service providers. The electronics manufacturing service provider said AI server revenue growth would be driven primarily by the Nvidia Corp GB300 server platform. Server shipments are expected to increase each quarter this year, with the second half likely to outperform the first half, it said. The AI server market is expected to broaden this year as more inference applications emerge, which would drive demand for system-on-chip, application-specific integrated circuits
At a massive shipyard in North Vancouver, Canadian workers grind metal beams for a powerful new icebreaker crucial to cementing the country’s presence in the increasingly contested arctic. Icebreakers are specialized, expensive vessels able to navigate in the frozen far north. And “this is the crown jewel,” said Eddie Schehr, vice president of production at the Seaspan shipyard. For Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who heads to Norway next Friday to observe arctic defense drills involving troops from 14 NATO states, Canada’s extreme north has emerged as a strategic priority. “Canada is and forever will be an Arctic nation,” he said ahead of
RSS