Dhaka, Bangladesh (BBN) – The chief executive officer (CEO) of Yahoo has stepped down, amid accusations that a fake computer science degree was included on his bio-data.
The Board of Directors has named Fred Amoroso as Chairman of the Board of Directors and Ross Levinsohn as interim Chief Executive Officer, effective immediately, the California-based company has said in an announcement.
The digital media company also announced that its board has reached an agreement with Third Point LLC (“Third Point”) to settle its pending proxy contest related to the company’s 2012 annual meeting of shareholders.
Mr. Amoroso replaces Roy Bostock, who has stepped down from his role as Non-Executive Chairman in order to accelerate the leadership transition for the new Board. Mr. Levinsohn replaces Scott Thompson, former Chief Executive Officer, who has left the company.
Under the board’s settlement agreement with third point, three third point nominees — Daniel S. Loeb, Harry J. Wilson, and Michael J. Wolf — will join the Yahoo! Board, effective May 16, this year.
Mr. Bostock, along with Patti Hart, VJ Joshi, Arthur Kern and Gary Wilson, all of whom previously disclosed their intentions not to stand for re-election, as well as Mr. Thompson, have decided to step down from the board immediately,” the company said.
Yahoo has already acknowledged that Mr Thompson, who took up his post in January, does not have a computer science degree.
Mr Thompson had previously been the president of online payments firm Paypal since 2008.
Since Mr Thompson joined Yahoo, he had been attempting to cut the firm’s costs and improve its fortunes.
Part of this involved cutting 2,000 jobs, or 14 percent of the company’s workforce, in a bid to save $375 million a year, BBC reported.
Besides its search engine, Yahoo’s key products include the photo sharing site Flickr and its webmail platform.
BBN/SSR/AD-14May12-10:59 am (BST)
