Carol Bartz was ousted from her spot as CEO of Yahoo, but don’t shed too many tears for her.
She’s leaving with as much as $14 million in a severance package that recognizes the fact that Bartz was fired “without cause,” as noted in a Securities and Exchange Commission document.
Bartz was pushed out of the company’s top position last week because during her tenure, despite numerous attempts at getting the company back on track, Yahoo continued to slip.
Unlike most high-profile CEO oustings, there was no one moment where Bartz did something outrageous and caused shareholders to be outraged. Instead, it was just a culmination of her failed projects and inability to deliver on what she was hired to do three years ago.
The hunt is now on for a new CEO. As late night talk show host Jimmy Fallon put it, “This is the first time in years that Yahoo has searched for anything.”
It’s no laughing matter for Yahoo, though, which has a seriously rough road ahead. The company has made a strong push in the mobile sector, which worked to its advantage for a time. But that’s an extremely volatile section of the market right now, and sideline players are constantly jumping from the spotlight to the background. Yahoo’s mobile presence has thus become rather muted.
Some segments of the company remain strong, such as its e-commerce business for online startups, and its Flickr photo sharing service. That’s not nearly enough to keep a giant company like Yahoo afloat, though.
Yahoo CFO Tim Morse has been appointed as the acting CEO until a final decision has been made on a replacement.
