Yahoo CEO Resigns. Things not Going the Yahoo! Way

3 CEOs in 3 years

Inflated academic credentials are believed to be the reason behind the resignation of Scott Thompson from the post of Chief Executive Officer at Yahoo! Inc. The Yahoo CEO resigns after much speculation.

Thompson joined Yahoo as the CEO of the company in January this year. He came from eBay Inc., and replaced Carol Bartz whom Yahoo had dismissed in September 2011.

It was on May 3 that Daniel Loeb who is a principal stakeholder (with 5.8% stake in Yahoo through the Third Point LLC) discovered the discrepancy in Thompson’s academic credentials. He found the official Yahoo biography of Scott Thompson exaggerating his academic credentials. The biography stated that Scott Thompson holds a dual degree in accounting and computer science. But the truth is that he holds a degree in accounting only.

According to sources, Ross Levinsohn who is the head of Global Media at Sunnyvale, California will replace Thompson as interim CEO.

This is the third dismissal of a CEO at Yahoo in just three years and it may make things more problematic at Yahoo which is already struggling to gain ground. Despite being one of the biggest brand names in the industry Yahoo’s performance has been consistently poor for the last few years. It has not been able to safeguard its market share from Facebook and Google. They have been persistently eating into  its market share.