It seems that these days, changing of CEOs is in fashion. First we saw Apple CEO Steve Jobs resign, which was for reasons far more legitimate, and a couple of weeks after that we heard that Yahoo CEO, probably the most powerful woman in the industry, Carol Bartz was abruptly fired. Now it turns out that Carol Bartz has ended all links with the company and has resigned from the Yahoo Board of Directors as well.
Bartz, having received a degree in computer science has been in the valley for a long, long time. Her executive career really kicked off when she became the CEO of Autodesk in 1992. Autodesk substantially improved under her command as she implemented new strategies that transformed the company from a mere PC software maker. After serving as CEO for an amazing period of 14 years, Carol Bartz stepped down as CEO of Autodesk but remain attached to the company as Executive Chairwoman of the BoD. She has been a board member for big companies like Intel and Cisco as well.
Her arrival at Yahoo was unprecedented. Yahoo Co-founder Jerry Yang who happened to be going through a managerial crisis handed over the CEO job to Carol Bartz on 13th January, 2009. She immediately began transforming Yahoo as new strategies were put in place and people were laid off. Her approval ratings were initially high but then it seemed that Yahoo was simply dragging its feet, even with Carol Bartz behind the wheel.
Apparently, the Board of Directors had had enough. 6th September 2011 was the day when Carol Bartz received a phone call from Yahoo Chairman Board of Directors Roy Bostock telling her that the board had decided to fire her. While one may think that firing a CEO over the phone is a bit wrong, Carol has been pretty vocal about this whole issue. However, she expressed the wish to stay on as a member of the Board of Directors because she did not want to abandon the employees at Yahoo altogether.
Now latest reports coming in indicated that Carol Bartz has decided to bid farewell to the Board of Directors as well and now she has no official link whatsoever with the companies or its employees. A spokesman for Yahoo has confirmed that Carol Bartz stepped down from the Board of Directors on Friday September 9, 2011.
Wonder what her severance package would be like?
lets see if the new CEO of yahoo can undo the damage done by the sluggish work done by the present regime !