Yahoo is adding a new director and parting ways with two other board members in the latest shakeup of the Internet company’s hierarchy.
PayPal co-founder Max Levchin joins Yahoo’s board, while Intuit CEO Brad Smith and Weather Channel CEO David Kenny step down.
The changes announced on Thursday pare Yahoo’s board to 11 directors. All but one of them, former accounting executive Sue James, have joined Yahoo’s board this year.
The overhaul is part of an effort to bring in new ideas as Yahoo tries to revive revenue growth and snap itself out of a malaise that has left its stock price well below where it stood five years ago.
Yahoo hired former Google executive Marissa Mayer five months ago to orchestrate the turnaround effort. She joined Yahoo’s board when she was named the company’s chief executive in July.
NEW DIRECTOR
Levchin, 37, is the first new director to be named since Mayer’s arrival.
After getting rich from PayPal’s US$1.5 billion sale to eBay a decade ago, Levchin started a photo-sharing service called Slide. He added to his wealth by selling Slide to Google for US$179 million two years ago.
Levchin stayed at Google briefly before leaving the Internet search leader to start a data-mining company called HVF.
“Max is someone I’ve admired throughout my career for his phenomenal sense for great products and keen focus on user experiences,” Mayer, also 37, said in a statement.
Levchin is the fourth director recruited by Daniel Loeb, who manages a hedge fund that ranks among Yahoo’s largest shareholders.
Loeb uncovered a misstatement on the official biography of Yahoo’s then-CEO, Scott Thompson, that led to Thompson’s departure earlier this year after just four months on the job.
After Thompson rejected Loeb’s attempts to gain a seat on Yahoo’s board, the company relented and agreed to allow him to nominate up to four people. Besides himself, Loeb picked turnaround specialist Harry Wilson and former MTV executive Michael Wolf before adding Levchin to the list.
REFOCUSING
Yahoo, which is based in Sunnyvale, California, said Smith and Kenny are stepping down to focus on running their own companies.
Smith joined Yahoo’s board in 2010 and Kenney followed last year. Both men participated in the complicated negotiations that culminated three months ago in Yahoo selling half its stake in rapidly growing Chinese Internet company Alibaba Group Holdings (阿里巴巴), generating a windfall of US$7.6 billion, before taxes.
Kenny was also once considered a candidate to be Yahoo’s CEO after the company fired Carol Bartz as its leader in September last year.
Mercuries Life Insurance Co (三商美邦人壽) shares surged to a seven-month high this week after local media reported that E.Sun Financial Holding Co (玉山金控) had outbid CTBC Financial Holding Co (中信金控) in the financially strained insurer’s ongoing sale process. Shares of the mid-sized life insurer climbed 5.8 percent this week to NT$6.72, extending a nearly 18 percent rally over the past month, as investors bet on the likelihood of an impending takeover. The final round of bidding closed on Thursday, marking a critical step in the 32-year-old insurer’s search for a buyer after years of struggling to meet capital adequacy requirements. Local media reports
US sports leagues rushed to get in on the multi-billion US dollar bonanza of legalized betting, but the arrest of an National Basketball Association (NBA) coach and player in two sprawling US federal investigations show the potential cost of partnering with the gambling industry. Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups, a former Detroit Pistons star and an NBA Hall of Famer, was arrested for his alleged role in rigged illegal poker games that prosecutors say were tied to Mafia crime families. Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier was charged with manipulating his play for the benefit of bettors and former NBA player and
The DBS Foundation yesterday announced the launch of two flagship programs, “Silver Motion” and “Happier Caregiver, Healthier Seniors,” in partnership with CCILU Ltd, Hondao Senior Citizens’ Welfare Foundation and the Garden of Hope Foundation to help Taiwan face the challenges of a rapidly aging population. The foundation said it would invest S$4.91 million (US$3.8 million) over three years to foster inclusion and resilience in an aging society. “Aging may bring challenges, but it also brings opportunities. With many Asian markets rapidly becoming super-aged, the DBS Foundation is working with a regional ecosystem of like-minded partners across the private, public and people sectors
BREAKTHROUGH TECH: Powertech expects its fan-out PLP system to become mainstream, saying it can offer three-times greater production throughput Chip packaging service provider Powertech Technology Inc (力成科技) plans to more than double its capital expenditures next year to more than NT$40 billion (US$1.31 billion) as demand for its new panel-level packaging (PLP) technology, primarily used in chips for artificial intelligence (AI) applications, has greatly exceeded what it can supply. A significant portion of the budget, about US$1 billion, would be earmarked for fan-out PLP technology, Powertech told investors yesterday. Its heavy investment in fan-out PLP technology over the past 10 years is expected to bear fruit in 2027 after the technology enters volume production, it said, adding that the tech would
RSS