

Yahoo’s Thompson Out; Levinsohn In; Board Settlement With Loeb Nears Completion - Empro
http://allthingsd.com/20120513/exclusive-yahoos-thompson-out-levinsohn-in-board-settlement-with-loeb-nears-completion/

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rdl
This is probably good news for Yahoo, not really because of the CEO
replacement, but because of the board shake-up. The new board is much more
likely to do a deal to sell the Alibaba, etc. assets, shrink Yahoo to
something reasonable, and maybe do a sale of the US operations.

Also, Kara Swisher is really a good tech journalist -- you never hear drama
about her being reported, but she consistently reports accurate news. I wish
the rest of the tech journalism community were like that.

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dr_
Now there's a real accomplishment, Thompson is gone. What does this solve?
Pretty much nothing. It's unclear to me why anyone thinks a hedge fund manager
sitting in Manhattan is going to be able to solve Yahoo's problems, when
pretty much no one else has or has been given enough chance to. If it were
just about him lying, everything else would have remained the same except for
him leaving. But it's obviously not, as Loeb gets to appoint board members,
who have media connections - but remember how having a media mogul run the
company turned out last time?
<http://money.cnn.com/2007/06/18/news/companies/yahoo_semel/>

And where are the manhattan bankers and hedge fund managers calling for Jamie
Dimon's resignation after the disasterous 2 billion loss at JP?

Yahoo! had somewhat of a chance of making it, but now most likely it will be
cut up and sold off in pieces. That's kinda sad.

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randomfool
On the bright side, the CEO cleaned house then got the axe himself. Decent
setup for his successor to gain the goodwill of employees as he doesn't need
to go through the painful layoff process.

+1 on concerns about the media focus of the company. If Yahoo! was YouTube, I
could understand it. But I don't see the reasoning here.

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uptown
"The company will apparently say he is leaving for 'personal reasons.'"

I wish companies would stop perpetuating this charade. It's rote corporate-
speak and an insult to anybody that cares about the story in the first place.
How about: "He screwed up. We screwed up. The best course of action for
everyone involved is to wipe the slate clean and start over."?

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untog
I suspect there are legal reasons for doing this, rather than PR ones. What
amount of "severance" he gets may rely a lot upon the reason for his
departure.

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codeonfire
From Forbes: "Thompson, who joins Yahoo! from eBay‘s PayPal — a curveball for
a potential spinoff of that unit — also gets a $1.5 million cash bonus and a
restricted stock award valued at $6.5 million in return for giving up cash and
equity awards he was due from his old job. Both are subject to clawback
provisions if he “terminates his employment without good reason” during his
first year at Yahoo!."

Obviously resigning due to ethical reasons would not be a good reason.

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uptown
In the land of corporate bullshit, is spending time with your family
considered a "good reason"? If so ... essentially they're fabricating a bogus
justification for his leaving as what seems like a payoff. We promise not to
go after the cash and stock we'd promised you if you promise to leave quietly
without a prolonged legal battle.

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Empro
The news was just made official. Press release:
<http://pressroom.yahoo.net/pr/ycorp/233946.aspx>

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sicxu
With the leaving of Scott, I hope yahoo will be able to settle patent dispute
with facebook.

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jusben1369
This is one advantage of a B2C vs B2B model. If Yahoo was a B2B company its
customers would have stopped doing business with it years ago forcing an
acquisition or bankruptcy. However, this really doesn't impact all those folks
who have it set as their homepage/email. So it can weather storm after storm.

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dredmorbius
Yahoo _is_ a B2B company.

Its customers are advertising networks.

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jusben1369
Hah. It creates services for consumers. It then monetizes those services by
selling access to ad networks it's true. My point being that if it sold
directly in a B2B environment its customer base would abandon them for
competitors due to instability. However, consumers don't change their behavior
based on the same types of concerns.

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panthera
the hilarious thing, is that all the angst and pain is about about Stonehill
college: collegeapps.about.com/od/collegeprofiles/p/stonehill-college.htm

...with an acceptance rate of 65%, does a computer science degree even matter?

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trompette
Today I totally bleed purple:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mh4jvDsNtEE>

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temphn
I really wonder whether Loeb hatched something with Zuckerberg after Thompson
launched that patent lawsuit. Nothing on the web about this, but could Loeb be
a quiet investor in FB? If so, well played.

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vital_sol
Cool!

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rshetty
Yahoo will Fall for sure as we can see with its unstable internal management.

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vicngtor
That was fast

