Fabricated Credentials Cost Yahoo! CEO His Job
A credentials scandal has pushed Yahoo! CEO Scott Thompson to step down from the position he held with the company. Yahoo! named Ross Levinsohn as interim CEO until a proper replacement for Thompson will be found.
Yahoo! Board of Directors named Scott Thompson as the new CEO back at the start of the year. Back in January the Board announced that after spending four months looking for a new CEO (they fired the former CEO, Carol Bartz, over the phone, and she was pretty miffed about it), it found a proper replacement in 54-year-old New Englander Scot Thompson.
At the time Thompson said that he plans to use his expertise and experience (he served as the President of eBay’s PayPal unit, Chief Information Officer for Barclays Global Investors and Visa Inc.’s Inovant) to make sure that Yahoo! returns to being an iconic brand. “I have a core belief that what happens in the next five years -- and the next ten -- is almost impossible to imagine,” said Thompson.
No one could have imagined at the time that only 5 months later Thompson would step down as Yahoo!’s CEO. Fabricated credentials are the reason for Thompson’s departure. In his resume it said that he had a dual accounting and computer science degree from Stonehill College, a private college in Massachusetts. But in a letter sent to the Board of Directors by Third Point CEO Daniel Loeb, it says that Thompson did not get a degree in accounting and computer science and that at the time Thompson went to Stonehill College, the institution did not offer a computer science degree.
In light of this scandal, Thompson decided to step down as CEO. The board of directors named Ross Levinsohn as interim CEO; he will get to run Yahoo’s day-to-day operations with the help of Yahoo!'s existing senior leadership team.
Scott Thompson is the fourth Yahoo! CEO to vacate the position within the past five years.
Yahoo! Board of Directors named Scott Thompson as the new CEO back at the start of the year. Back in January the Board announced that after spending four months looking for a new CEO (they fired the former CEO, Carol Bartz, over the phone, and she was pretty miffed about it), it found a proper replacement in 54-year-old New Englander Scot Thompson.
At the time Thompson said that he plans to use his expertise and experience (he served as the President of eBay’s PayPal unit, Chief Information Officer for Barclays Global Investors and Visa Inc.’s Inovant) to make sure that Yahoo! returns to being an iconic brand. “I have a core belief that what happens in the next five years -- and the next ten -- is almost impossible to imagine,” said Thompson.
No one could have imagined at the time that only 5 months later Thompson would step down as Yahoo!’s CEO. Fabricated credentials are the reason for Thompson’s departure. In his resume it said that he had a dual accounting and computer science degree from Stonehill College, a private college in Massachusetts. But in a letter sent to the Board of Directors by Third Point CEO Daniel Loeb, it says that Thompson did not get a degree in accounting and computer science and that at the time Thompson went to Stonehill College, the institution did not offer a computer science degree.
In light of this scandal, Thompson decided to step down as CEO. The board of directors named Ross Levinsohn as interim CEO; he will get to run Yahoo’s day-to-day operations with the help of Yahoo!'s existing senior leadership team.
Scott Thompson is the fourth Yahoo! CEO to vacate the position within the past five years.
