Yahoo! CEO Thompson has been Fired

Most of us smarter, rational people saw this coming (not Blake obviously) ““Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson WAS found that he padded his resume with an embellished college degree”” And there’s the smoking gun. ba da bing. ""Mr. Levinsohn replaces Scott Thompson, former Chief Executive Officer, who has left the Company. He will be replaced on an interim basis by Ross Levinsohn, the company’s global head of media. “” ““Patti S. Hart, the director who led the C.E.O. search that culminated with Mr. Thompson’s hiring, announced that she would not seek re-election. Ms. Hart was also revealed to have misstated her academic credentials, having earned a degree in business administration instead of marketing and economics.”” This still cracks me up: Ms. Hart, the director who faked her own resume, led the search for the CEO that faked his resume. What the heck is Yahoo doing? http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20120513005059/en/Yahoo!-Names-Fred-Amoroso-Chairman-Appoints-Ross http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/yahoo-fires-thompson-and-nears-deal-with-loeb/

Pretty annoying situation all around imo and nobody wins. He definitely needed to be fired, but Loeb also comes out looking like a tool (nobody likes a tattle tale Danny) - should’ve just saved himself and his investors the trouble by not making such a sh!tty investment to begin with.

I think Danny wins actually. His business model requires him to be the bad guy (as an aggressive activist). The fact that he found some dirt and was vindicated so publicly gives him more credibility. He already has a “great reputation” for stirring the pot and getting results, and this should only make it stronger. At some point, you can get results as an activist strictly because of what you have done in the past, and he has probably reached that point now (if not before). It doesn’t mean he will necessarily be successful in every activist attempt in the future, but every win makes him stronger.

haha. Yet another misstep for an already directionless company.

They might as well hire one of us as CEO. Seems like a revolving door up top YHOO.

Bromion - For sure, nothing wrong with extra exposure and winning the battle. It’s what needs to be done as an activist.

Understandably as an activist you can’t always be in a position to enact change (as seems to be the case here). But it’s important to understand when it’s possible to do so and when it’s not and to exit when it’s not since your reason for the trade is gone.

Since his investment he’s underperformed the SP by ~20% and is still looking for another 30% appreciation before he’ll start exiting (according to his initial thesis). Things aren’t looking too rosy imo and as an investor I wouldn’t be too happy. This looks like it’ll end up in the same bucket as Ackman’s Target trade.

IMO he should’ve gotten out when he couldn’t gain control of the board when he first tried. Now he’s saying he’ll fight yahoo for as long as it takes. Seems like the classic case of hoping for a loser to turn around and that doesn’t seem to usually work out well.

It might be a loser, I can’t say because I’ve never really looked at Yahoo. But it could go from loser to winner very quickly if he somehow did enact change and manged to force a sale of the company (presumably to Microsoft, which is another dog, and a company that enjoys overpaying for other tech companies). Will be an interesting case study no matter what happens. The reason I personally could never see myself becoming an activist investor (besides not having the personality for it), is that by definition you have to take risky concentrated bets that often have binary outcomes. It’s great when it works but you can get beaten up pretty badly if you fail.

.

I never said ST should not have been fired. I said IF evidence existed that he missrepresented myself (whether bio or resume) then appropriate actions should be taken.

BUT now that he is gone I don’t see how this is good for the business.

Another misstep for a company that really is the joke of Silicon Valley.

Couldn’t agree more - used to be that event driven strategies (lol at “riskarb”) were all about insider info/positioning. Outside of that, it’s absolutely a coin flip, there’s no edge, and the risk/return is very meh.

You spent posts and posts saying how we were all idiots and that the fake degree couldn’t possibly have been written by him, and that none of us knew how companies worked…

English must not be your first language or else you are an idiot. First off, he wasn’t fired he stepped down for “personal reasons.”

I’m not going to continue the nonsense of the other thread but has it been proven that he wrote the bio or resume or did someone else?

But I agree with your statement that “none of us knew how companies worked…” that is true.

Blake is ST.

Come on Blake, he stepped down for personal reasons? That means he was well liked at the company but got fired and they want to let him save face. It can’t possibly be a conincidence that he is stepping down now for personal reason, let’s be real.

Blake McTroll, the more you talk, the dumber you look… that’s my new name for you. Rather fitting

Remember, don’t feed the troll people…

iteracom, I usually don’t waste my time with BOMs like yourself but here we go.

  1. Scott Thompson wasn’t fired

  2. Your statement “”Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson WAS found that he padded his resume with an embellished college degree”” is not true

  3. By constantly referring to people as “trolls” you are actually the one who is demonstrating disruptive behavior

You need to understand that when you post opinion and make non-factual statements that you are going to be challenged. If you can’t handle this then post fact and don’t make opinions here. Or don’t come out here. There are hundreds of posters on this forum. Understand that you and maybe one other person out here are the ONLY people that I challenge.

man, can we just let this discussion die?

I’m not feeding you McTroll, so stop trying to elicit a response

I’m sure MOST people here are educated enough to know anything in “” means it’s an actual copy-and-paste quote

http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/13/technology/yahoo-ceo-out/index.htm?hpt=hp_t2

““Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson is out after it was found he padded his resume with an embellished college degree, ending his term at the company after just four months.””

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304192704577402224129006022.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories

““In particular, an executive-search firm provided Yahoo with information that appeared to show Mr. Thompson years ago had knowingly claimed to have a computer-science degree that he, in fact, didn’t have.””

I bet Blake lied about his Masters degree.

apparently he had some sort of cancer…either way, Blake is classic…love how Blake is so cool, calm and collected…