Yahoo CEO (Chief Executive Officer) Jerry Yang will step down as soon as Yahoo will get a new CEO.
Yang will return to his former role as Chief Yahoo. Jerry Yang is the co-founder of Yahoo along with David Filo.
Yang took office last year in June 2007 as CEO, promising investors and the company to bring back lost glory of Yahoo and advertisers who turned to Google for online advertising needs.
It seems it was one of the worst decisions Yang took in his life.
First the offer of Microsoft to buy Yahoo for $31 per Share, (approximately $44.6 billion in cash and stock) was rejected.
Second, Google abandoned a search advertising partnership amid regulatory concerns. Yang was desperate that this deal goes through, but things just did not go the way he wanted.
Yang faced a growing chorus of criticism from investors and analysts as Yahoo’s shares nosedived. Yahoo shares which were trading at over $30 just a few weeks before are now hovering at $10 per share.
Shareholders are unhappy, investors are not happy, and now finally Yang is stepping down.
There are some lessons learnt from this:
1) Even if you are a founder of a company, it does not necessarily mean that you will be good in all the jobs in the company.
2) Yang became emotional with his business. He treated Yahoo as his child. A business is a business and one should not get emotional at any point of time. Had he used his brain instead of his heart, Yahoo would have been sold – and he would have made a lot of money along with the investors and shareholders.
3) One should NOT get too greedy. Yang said he wanted to sell Yahoo “at the right price”. What is the right price? When Yahoo stock price was around $30, MicroSoft offered $31 per share. They were willing to offer even more. That’s reasonable from business point of view. They couldn’t have offered more than that; after all even MS is doing business.
4) Listen to your investors and shareholders. In anticipation that MicroSoft will buy Yahoo, the share price of Yahoo skyrocketed. It was a clear indication that shareholders wanted the sale. But it did not happen.
What have you learnt from this incident?
