Last week, CNBC’s Kayla Tausche reported on The Kudlow Report that Yahoo’s Board of Directors would meet a day ahead of a scheduled shareholder’s meeting. Her report concluded that the primary focus of the meeting would be Yahoo’s ongoing CEO search and that the meeting would be held in the afternoon on July 11, 2012. That, of course, is later today.
To call the Yahoo CEO scandal of May a circus would be a gross understatement. To quickly recap the events.. Former CEO Scott Thompson was forced to stepped down when it was discovered that the computer science degree that he listed on his CV was about as true as the fact that porn stars rarely have tattoos. Thompson, to compound his fiction than claimed he was stepping down do to a newly discovered “serious illness.”
In May, Thompson was replaced by Ross Levinsohn, who ran Yahoo’s Americas unit as well as most of its advertising sales.
All of this came in the wake of a massive restructuring Thompson was in the midst of at Yahoo, after 2,000 employee layoffs.
No recap is complete without the mention of the abrasive, activist shareholder Daniel Loeb of Third Point. It was Loeb, who discovered the “inaccuracies” in Thompson’s resume. As a result, Loeb was awarded three board seats from a slate proposed to him in the ensuing proxy fight.
For all intents and purposes, Ross Levinsohn is a near shoe in for the job. The interim CEO faced a battle with Jason Kilar, the CEO of Hulu, for the position until news sources reported last week that Kilar had “graciously declined.” It is believed that the list had been narrowed down to the two of them in Yahoo’s search and today should bring closure to the issue, and may even go to the shareholders tomorrow.
Levinsohn, if appointed as expected, will become the fifth CEO to lead Yahoo since their failure to recognize that Microsoft’s buyout offer $44 billion was probably their best bet. The only question that remains is whether Levinsohn will be the fifth CEO in as many years or whether he can show an ability to right this ship.
