Tuesday, 19 June 2007

Yahoo Co-Founder Jerry Yang Replaces Terry Semel As CEO

Terry Semel, one of the co-founders of Yahoo, one of the world’s top portals has decided to step down as CEO and instead bringing in Jerry Yang...

Terry Semel, one of the co-founders of Yahoo, one of the world’s top portals has decided to step down as CEO and instead bringing in Jerry Yang.

Semel’s stepping down comes less than a week after he faced off with shareholders disillusioned with the company's falling market share as Google Inc. pulled further ahead in the lucrative online advertising market.

Yahoo has lost nearly 30 per cent of its stock price since the end of 2005, when Google started picking up.

To fill the void created by Semel's departure, Yahoo appointed company co-founder Jerry Yang as its new CEO and named Susan Decker as its president. Decker, who had been touted as Semel's heir apparent, was recently promoted from Yahoo's chief financial officer to oversee the company's advertising operations.

Semel, 64, will remain chairman in a non-executive role after spending the past six years running the company.

"The company is in good hands," Semel said in an interview Monday. "I felt like it was time for me to move more into a coach's role than a player's role."

Yahoo also said Semel will not receive any severance package as his decision to leave was voluntary. Semel, who joined Yahoo in May at the height of dotcom bust, made nearly USD450 million in gains by exercising some of the stock options he received during his tenure.

Despite Yahoo's recent struggles, Semel received another big bundle of stock options last year that boosted the value of his 2006 compensation package to .7 million.

Mountain View-based Google now makes more money in a single quarter than Yahoo does in an entire year. The contrast represents a harsh comedown for Yahoo, which was the larger of the two companies when Google went public in August 2004.

Since then, Google has steadily expanded upon the Internet's largest advertising network to create nearly USD140 billion in shareholder wealth as its stock price increased by more than sixfold. Yahoo's stock, meanwhile, is worth a little bit less than when Google went public.