Yahoo! Hits A Crossroad… Again

Yahoo's CEO steps down amid fake allegations in his resume. On Monday, stocks were up.

The revolving door continues to spin once again at Yahoo!.

But it appears as though investors are liking some of the changes. Yahoo's stocks were up Monday morning, following some tumultuous changes at the Sunnyvale company.

Yahoo! rose as much as 2.2 percent in the first half hour of trading Monday, opening at $15.47, about 2 percent more than Friday's closing price.

That bump comes after chief executive Scott Thompson stepped down from his position of only four months on Sunday. The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that Thompson has thyroid cancer.

Current executive vice-president and head of global media Ross Levinsohn will take over leadership duties.   Board members from hedge fund group, Third Point, exposed false information in Thompson's resume, which led to him to leave the company.  The move ends a battle by Third Point chief Daniel Loeb on the makeup of Yahoo's board of directors and the direction to make the company more competitive.  Loeb, who owns nearly 6 percent of company stock, will also have several board seats filled by members from his team.

Thompson had tried to move Yahoo! back into the forefront.   He had a major restructuring program in place to eliminate 2,000 positions from the company's 14,000 workforce.   But he recently stumbled when he sued Facebook over a patent lawsuit.   And his constant battles with board members and eventually his own resume doomed him.   It turns out he only has an accounting degree, instead of majoring in computer science as was listed.

Yahoo! has been facing recent turmoil before Thompson's leaving.   Company leaders refused to give in to a potential Microsoft takeover which might have boosted its' stocks and position in the search engine field which is dominated by rival Google.   Thompson's departure makes him the fourth CEO to leave Yahoo! in the past five years.

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