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[LimeJuice2]

Carol Bartz Out at Yahoo

Several sources said the board, specifically Chairman Roy Bostock and Co-founder and director Jerry Yang, seems to have acted today, informing Bartz of the need to make a change.

What the next steps will be are unclear, but Yahoo needs desperately to explore a range of changes to bring it back to its former glory.

Sources said Morse held a call with Yahoo’s senior staff this afternoon, telling them Bartz was out and that a search for a permanent CEO is commencing.

Why Yahoo’s board did not name a new leader immediately is curious and might indicate a larger deal around Yahoo is in the offing.

...
While Bartz has streamlined certain areas and made some strong management hires, her performance has been decidedly bumpy and mostly downhill.

The share price has settled in at about $12.50 (just about where it was when Bartz took over), Yahoo’s recent financial results have been weak, its key advertising business is struggling, its attrition rate among engineers and others is startlingly high and its product innovation cycle seems stopped up.

Add to that: Weak relationships with key Asian partners, a pricey but failed marketing effort and a proclivity for embarrassing verbal gaffes by Bartz.

Still, given that Yahoo’s Internet traffic, top media sites and brand remain huge, the going-sideways situation has again caused some investors — including powerful private equity firms and other monied investors — to pull out their spreadsheets about a variety of scenarios related to Yahoo.

The players who have sniffed around of late are powerful, sources said, including Silver Lake Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, former News Corp. exec Peter Chernin and Providence Equity Partners, among others. Also in the Wall Street rumor mill recently are large companies: AT&T, News Corp. and Verizon.

All the schemes are different — ranging from taking it private to making a large investment to splitting it into parts — although they all seem to require cooperation with Yahoo to get done.

And while there is no serious effort afoot as yet, there have been increasing signs of late that Yahoo’s board is ready to listen to any serious offers, said multiple sources, especially as the company has continued to drift under the leadership of Bartz.


source: http://allthingsd.co...fo-interim-ceo/

[AlohaBear]

She must be swearing up a storm.

[LimeJuice2]

Oh boy, not another round of YHOO buyout rumors.  The MSFT attempted buyout for $33/share was a big enough fiasco.  The article names a number of companies that would want to buy YHOO -- really?  Most of yahoo's properties are declining in value.  It a has been like AOL.  Yet stock is not that cheap.  This is not a firesale like ORCL's purchase of JAVA (SUNW).