Carol Bartz’s tenure at Yahoo! is over. The CEO was fired Wednesday after two-and-a-half years at the helm of the media giant that has languished in mediocrity both during and in the time leading up to her taking over leadership of the company.
Chief financial officer Timothy Morse, the company’s board announced, will take over as interim CEO, effective immediately. Several senior Yahoo! executives have been named to a new leadership council to help Morse manage day-to-day operations until a new, permanent CEO is named.
Bartz let many people know of her axing before Yahoo! made the official announcement late Tuesday. “I am very sad to tell you that I’ve just been fired over the phone by Yahoo’s Chairman of the Board. It has been my pleasure to work with all of you and I wish you only the best going forward." That was in an email first published by AllThingsD.
Bartz, who successfully led Autodesk, a drafting and design software company, took over as Yahoo! CEO in January 2009 after Jerry Yang resigned. The company battled declining earnings under Yang’s leadership, and most importantly, a greatly decreased influence on the Internet – where it was a major player in the search-engine game before Google came along. Bartz was unable to turn that around – the company’s stock price hasn’t budged, earnings continue to be weak and its advertising business isn’t doing so hot.
Yahoo! stock jumped during initial trading Wednesday, up about 8 percent ($13.90), but had slipped back to $13.54 as of 11:54 a.m. ET.
