Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang, after several months of verbal beatings from stockholders, has agreed to step down as CEO. He will remain on the board along with Yahoo! chairman Roy Bostock.  Yang is the co-founder of Yahoo! and currently has a net worth of $2.3 billion dollars.

Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock and Mr. Yang, who will stay on as a senior executive and board member, have been discussing for weeks the possibility the CEO might step aside, said people familiar with the matter. His impending exit leaves much unresolved for the Internet company, which has been fighting a battle to remain independent for months.

Yang pissed off stockholders back in May when he turned down $33 a share from Microsoft for the company.  Yahoo! is currently valued at $10.63

Could Yang’s departure restart negotiations for Microsoft to buy Yahoo!?

A person familiar with Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer’s thinking said that the Microsoft chief is still interested in buying Yahoo’s search business, which could help the software company with the critical task of ratcheting up its market share against Google Inc. But Mr. Ballmer is in no rush, this person said, and will likely wait until a new Yahoo chief executive is named before making any new entreaty.

This is great news for Yahoo! stockholders. Yang might have been a genius to create Yahoo!, but he has also been a dunce running it almost completely into the ground. Being a stockholder myself, I am thrilled with the news of Yang leaving.  Look for the price of Yahoo!’s stock to rise today in anticipation of a potential deal with Microsoft happening once again.

Above Chart Shows Yahoo! Stock Price for the Past Six Months

Yahoo! trades on the NASDAQ under the symbol YHOO.

[image: WENN]