Yahoo has fired CEO Carol Bartz over the phone, after just 18 months at the helm. The move has fuelled speculation that the embattled internet media firm may go up for sale, after struggling against younger rivals Google and Facebook for years.
Bartz told her employees of the news in an email this morning: “I am very sad to tell you that I’ve just been fired over the phone by Yahoo’s chairman of the board.”
She was recruited in 2009 to replace Jerry Yang after he rejected a $47bn takeover offer from Microsoft.
In a statement, Yahoo’s board said Bartz had carried the business through ‘a critical time of transition in the company’s history, against a very challenging macro-economic backdrop’.
Yahoo has temporarily installed Bartz’s deputy, the chief financial officer, Tim Morse, in the CEO role.
Yahoo was once one of the internet’s most valuable properties – and the target of a spurned $44.6bn (£27.8bn) takeover bid from Microsoft in January 2008. By way of comparison, Yahoo’s value is currently hovering around the $16bn mark.
The company said in a statement it is carrying out a “comprehensive strategic review” to “position the company for future growth”. But an insider speaking to the Wall Street Journal said the company is “open to selling itself to the right bidder”.
Although the company has hired a team of headhunters to find candidates to take over the job, the mood inside and outside the company suggests it faces the most serious challenge to its existence in its 17-year history.
Yahoo’s second-quarter results were its worst since 2005 and the firing of Bartz probably indicates that the current quarter is going no better.
