Moneybox

Scott Thompson Out As Yahoo CEO; ThirdPoint Settlement Imminent?

The resume padding scandal at Yahoo that already forced the resignation of one board member, has now led to the resignation of CEO Scott Thompson who was recently forced to admit that he’d only been pretending to have a bachelor’s degree in computer science. The backdrop for all of this has been the effort by Daniel Loeb to use the large stake in Yahoo owned by his ThirdPoint hedge fund to force major changes on the Yahoo board, and it looks like the resume issue may have given him the public relations leverage he needs.

Shareholder activism is rarely successful in forcing major changes on an incumbent board, but the word is out today that some kind of settlement with ThirdPoint is imminent. One wonders if Loeb had some knowledge of the discrepencies in Thompson’s education before launching his Value Yahoo campaign, since without it he’d have been in a much weaker position.