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June 18, 2007
Semel's Supposed Ben Tre Explanation
The WSJ Deal Journal wins the award for the most out-there explanation for Terry Semel's departure from the CEO seat at Yahoo. Check this:Semel says: “The Board and I have long talked about the importance of ensuring a smooth succession in Yahoo!’s senior leadership — and more recently, about the need for a leadership team committed toYou've got to be kidding. The much-criticized Semel left the company now because the board wouldn't do a deal he wanted to do? That reminds me of the old Vietnam-era line about having to destroy the village to save it.
carrying Yahoo! through its multi-year transformation.”
Does that mean the former Hollywood executive wasn’t “committed to carrying Yahoo! through its multi-year transformation”? If not, is that because he thinks the company needs a deal to give it a competitive edge vis a vis the likes of Google? ...
If Semel resigned over deal-related differences with the board, it wouldn’t be the first time this has happened.
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The preceding said, there is certainly more going on here than meets the eye. A few weeks ago Jerry Yang was the invisible guy. Last week at the Yahoo annual Terry Semel inexplicably started pitching the idea of Yang as Yahoo CTO. And this week, he's the CEO. Quite the change, and not one that's like to sit well with Wall Street the more people ponder it.
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*yahoo still has a strong audience -- needs to open up y! services more, go off-network, and address the at work user (so it does not become a consumer/home only product)
*monetization is the easier part of the equation to fix and panama seems to be going in the right direction
*it needs to upgrade talent and rid itself of bottom 10% --- still lots of dead-wood at the company.
my sense is that yahoo still has 2 yrs. to prove it can fight with the big-boys.