Top execs depart in Yahoo reshuffle
Published: 06 Dec 2006 08:47 GMT
Yahoo's chief operating officer and the head of its entertainment group are leaving as part of a major reorganisation announced late on Tuesday.
Chief operating officer Dan Rosensweig and Lloyd Braun, the head of Yahoo's media and entertainment group, are leaving the company, Yahoo spokeswoman Joanna Stevens said. John Marcom, senior vice president of International Operations, is also leaving the company "soon", she said. She declined to provide more details.
Meanwhile, chief financial officer Sue Decker will take over a reorganised advertising business unit, but will continue to serve as CFO until a replacement is found, the company said.
The leadership assignments will take effect on 1 January, 2007, and the reorganisation is expected to be completed by the end of March. Stevens said no layoffs were being announced at this time.
Yahoo, which has suffered this year from search market share losses, the delay of its new ad platform and a drop in profits, is realigning its business groups under three new operating units. The executives heading up the units will report directly to Yahoo chief executive Terry Semel.
The new Audience Group will oversee search, media, communities and communications. An executive search has been launched for an executive to lead the group. The new Advertiser & Publisher Group will combine marketing, sales and distribution partners to create a global advertising network. The new Technology Group, headed by chief technology officer Farzad Nazem, will tighten product-engineering integration, help build new social media environments and speed up development of next-generation ad platforms, the company said in a statement late on Tuesday.
"The internet is continuing to grow and evolve at a rapid pace, and we're reshaping Yahoo to be a leader in this transformation, just as we did successfully five years ago," chief executive Terry Semel said in a statement.
Rosensweig, who joined Yahoo nearly five years ago, was previously president of CNET Networks, the publisher of ZDNet UK.
Braun, a former ABC executive, was also hired by Semel, another ex-Hollywood executive — from Warner Brothers. Braun's tenure has been a rocky one at Yahoo, marked by rumours of his departure and complaints that he didn't fit with the tech culture of Silicon Valley and failed to turn the company into an entertainment powerhouse.
Braun's departure was not included in the formal announcement but was confirmed after the fact.
The new structure should quicken the pace of innovation at the company, which is in heated competition with Google and Microsoft for online ad dollars.
The changes are similar to general suggestions proposed by an executive in an internal memo that leaked out last month.
In the missive known as "The Peanut Butter Manifesto" (subscription required), senior vice president Brad Garlinghouse said Yahoo was "spreading its resources too thin, like peanut butter on a slice of bread". He complained that Yahoo lacks a "focused, coherent vision", "clarity of ownership and accountability" and "decisiveness", and recommended a dramatic organisational shake-up and workforce cuts of up to 20 percent.
Yahoo, which ceded its leadership in the search market to Google after the dot-com bust, has been troubled with setbacks this year. They have included the delay of its new advertising platform, which was designed to help it better compete against Google, and a drop in third-quarter profits attributed to slowing ad sales.
Over the last year, Yahoo has continued to lose market share to Google. Google's share has risen to 45.4 percent market share in the UN in October from 39 percent a year earlier, while Yahoo's market share fell to 28.2 percent from 29.2 percent, according to comScore. Yahoo has watched Google's stock rise to more than $500 (£253.58) a share, while Yahoo's share price has fallen about 30 percent since the beginning of the year. It closed at $27.40 (13.90) on Tuesday.
Google has also been out-wheeling and dealing Yahoo, snagging a deal to provide advertising on MySpace. The popular social-networking site had been getting ads served by Yahoo.
There have also been other executive losses at Yahoo recently, including David Katz, who was in charge of Yahoo's sports and studios units, and two executives from the Yahoo Publishing Network Group, senior vice president Bill Demas and general manager Will Johnson.
CNET News.com's Stefanie Olsen in San Francisco contributed to this report.
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