A year of change will continue at Yahoo! (NASDAQ:YHOO) with Monday’s announcement that it will layoff thousands of workers as part of a large corporate restructuring plan.
The news came after Yahoo said it has been working with the Boston Consulting Group to evaluate potential changes at the company. They could become public by the end of the month, according to a story by All Things Digital, and will most likely include a change in senior executives–possibly from Yahoo’s products group.
Other areas that could affected include “public relations and marketing, research, marginal businesses and weaker regional efforts.”
A lot of the changes are being driven by Yahoo’s new CEO Scott Thompson who took over the reins in January. He was previously the head of Ebay’s online payments division.
Thompson has hit the ground running. His first initiative included the threat to pursue patent litigation against Facebook. The issue had been brewing for months and under Thompson’s lead it may be moving forward.
Another move by Thompson was the recent evaluation by Yahoo to sell its Asian assets back to its partners such as Alibaba Group and SoftBank. The talks have stopped for now but could resume.
And now with Monday’s news, it exemplifies a step in Thompson’s mission to go through the company and find ways to get it going again after its previous leadership under Carol Bartz.
The company has room to improve.
From the fourth quarter of 2011, Yahoo reported its net income dropped 5 percent. Its GAAP revenue dropped 13 percent during the quarter as compared to the previous year. The company has had problems determining its corporate strategy and has been trying to increase its competitive position in the search and advertising space by taking on both the big boys including Google and Microsoft as well as smaller market participants.
Thompson recently said, “In 2012 we will be aligning resources behind key areas of focus to enable us to move aggressively in market and grow our business, bringing innovative new products and experiences to both our users and advertisers.”
Yahoo did not immediately comment on Monday’s news but a Boston Consulting Group spokesperson noted,”as a matter of policy, BCG does not comment on its work with companies.”
