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Industry Trends

Bye Bye Bartz‏

By September 7, 2011July 30th, 2023No Comments

In what may be a surprise to many, Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz has been booted out the door by the independent directors of the company.

It was certainly a surprise to Ms. Bartz, when she was informed about the decision over the phone on the 6th of September!

Bartz had been heading the company for nearly three years. When she had taken over, Yahoo! was bad shape and she had to face many challenges. Although she managed to overcome some of the problems, the general consensus was that her style of functioning was not good enough and she had not been able to achieve as much as was expected of her. It was also felt that she was not taking the competition from Facebook seriously enough.

During her tenure at Yahoo! Bartz did not succeed in bringing the company’s stock back up anywhere near the price it was trading at when Microsoft tried to buy it out.

After the news of her termination was publicised, Yahoo! stocks went up 6% in after-hours trading. The share price had been more or less flat during her regime in spite of a 60% rise in the overall Nasdaq Composite Index. Yahoo!’s performance was also poor compared to fellow search provider, Google.

That said, Yahoo! did post a profit of over a million dollars last year even though comScore reported that visitors were spending 33% less minutes on Yahoo! sites since Ms. Bartz took over.

Yahoo!’s Chief Financial Officer, Tim Morse, has been asked to take over her duties until a suitable replacement is found. In a memo to employees, Carol Bartz expressed her sadness at having to leave the company and wished all her colleagues all the best.

As of now, Yahoo!’s future is once again up for speculation. It is believed by some that they may even be willing to be bought over for the right price.