Yahoo! CEO fired over the phone
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Web company axes CEO Carol Bartz after she failed to stem share value decline after two years at the helm
Web portal and online services company Yahoo! has unceremoniously fired its CEO of two years, Carol Bartz.
In an email to the entire Yahoo! staff, Bartz said that she was fired over the phone by Yahoo!'s chairman, Roy Bostock. "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 email read.
Yahoo!'s chairman Roy Bostock said in a statement that “the Board sees enormous growth opportunities on which Yahoo! can capitalise, and our primary objective is to leverage the company’s leadership and current business assets and platforms to execute against these opportunities."
Chief financial officer Tim Morse has been appointed interim chief executive until a replacement for Bartz is found.
Before joining Yahoo! Bartz was CEO of Autodesk, which makes AutoCAD design software. She was brought to Yahoo! early in 2009 to replace founder and long time CEO Jerry Yang. She came with a reputation for strong management and Silicon Valley experience, but critics said she had lacked credentials in web 2.0 or Internet advertising.
The expectation was that she would bring some order to a company in need of a traditional manager type at the helm. "She also knows how to run a company like clockwork, unlike Yang, who–while inspirational–has had a rocky tenure and has been considered weak in execution," tech blog All Things D wrote at the time.
Yahoo! has now replaced three CEOs in just over four years, during which time the company has lost the a lot of ground to Google in the Internet advertising race.
