Yahoo! CEO Scott Thompson steps down

A scandal surrounding the qualifications that Yahoo! CEO, Scott Thompson held resulted in an official step down. The scandal revolved around the CEO’s college degree. Thompson claimed that he received a degree in accounting and computer science from Stonehill college in 1978. While he did receive the accounting degree, Stonehill confirmed it, the college claimed that a computer science program did not begin until 1983. That is 5 years after the CEO graduated. The error was brought to light by Yahoo! activist invester, Dan Loeb, who also discovered that Director Patti Hart misrepresented her college degree as well. She said she got a degree in marketing and economics from Illinois State University, however, what she really got was a degree in business administration.

He’s out

When the scandal surrounding Thompson’s degree was brought to light, he claimed that it was a deliberate manipulation of facts that a headhunter made on his resume. The headhunter made the manipulation following Thompson getting hired at eBay, sometime in the mid-2000s. According to Mashable, the headhunter submitted a copy of the resume that Thompson had provided them with at the time and the fake degree was on that resume. Thompson’s removal from Yahoo! is allegedly not because of the degree manipulation, but the way in which he handled the scandal when the truth came out. Many Yahoo! staffers, engineers and higher executives have called for his dismissal.

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Yahoo! released a press statement saying that the Board of Directors have chosen Fred Amoroso as the Chairman of the Board and Ross Levinsohn as interim Chief Executive Officer. The change will be effective immediately. Levinsohn is the head of global media at Yahoo!. Thompson is being slated as leaving for “personal reasons”. Could these personal reasons have anything to do with the scandal? Yahoo!’s CEO office seems to change tenants quite frequently. Thompson stepped in for ex-CEO Carol Bartz last September and Bartz herself took over from Jerry Yang, who held the position for a little over a year. Thompson himself, came into position on the 4th of January of this year, while an interim CEO filled the shoes in the in-between time.