Yahoo board member Vyomesh Joshi, two other longtime board members and chairman Roy Bostock are stepping down at the company in a move to placate angry shareholders who blame them for contributing to missteps that dragged down the Internet company’s revenue and stock price, the Associated Press reported.
The shake-up announced Feb. 7 continues a drastic makeover of Yahoo’s leadership as the company negotiates to sell its Asian assets in a complex deal that could help ignite a long-promised turnaround.
After Yahoo hired former PayPal executive Scott Thompson as its CEO at the beginning of the year, Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang resigned from the board and severed all other ties with the company that he helped start in 1995.
Bostock is departing after four years as chairman. Many shareholders blame him and Yang for missing an opportunity to sell Yahoo to Microsoft Corp. in May 2008 for $47.5 billion, or $33 per share. Yahoo’s shares closed Feb. 7 at $15.83, up $0.01, and then added another $0.09 in extended trading.
“It was time for him to leave the scene,” B. Riley & Co. analyst Sameet Sinha told AP. To allow management a new slate, Joshi — an Indian American Hewlett-Packard Co. executive who has been on Yahoo’s board since 2005 — Arthur Kern and Gary Wilson have agreed not to seek re-election at Yahoo's shareholders meeting this June.
“These changes are long overdue,” said Ryan Jacob, portfolio manager of Jacob Asset Management, which owns more than 140,000 Yahoo shares. “It had gotten to the point where the board really didn’t have any other choice. I think everyone needed a clean break.”