SUNNYVALE, Calif. — Unable to rescue the Internet giant he founded from its worst decline since the dot-com bust, Yahoo chief executive Jerry Yang said Monday that he plans to step down as soon as he can find a successor.
Yang took over for former Hollywood executive Terry Semel in June 2007 with promises to revive the company’s fortunes. Instead, he is returning to a figurehead executive position after a stormy tenure in which he let two would-be partners slip away, bungling takeover talks with Microsoft and failing to land an advertising partnership with Google.
“This whole storybook ending of the founder coming back as CEO hasn’t panned out too well,” Motley Fool analyst Rick Munarriz said. “Yahoo finally realizes that there is a problem at the company, and it starts at the top.”
Yang will return to his former post as “Chief Yahoo” and remain on the board.
Yahoo’s stock has lost about 60 percent of its value on Yang’s watch, erasing more than $20 billion of market value. Its shares fell 2 percent to $10.63 Monday.
“We all agree that now is the right time to make the transition to a new CEO who can take the company to the next level,” Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock said.
An alternative to Microsoft’s unsolicited $47.5 billion offer that was rejected, Yahoo’s search-advertising partnership with Google fell apart two weeks ago.
“The CEO has one job: That’s to get the stock price up,” said Anthony Valencia, media analyst for TCW Group in Los Angeles, which owns Yahoo shares.
“Most CEOs can only do that in one way; that is operationally. Jerry had the opportunity to do that, and he had the added bonus of being able to maximize shareholder value by selling the company to Microsoft. On both fronts, he was unsuccessful,” Valencia said.
