When Mayer was hired to be Yahoo’s new CEO in July 2012, she announced on the same day as her new job announcement that she was six months pregnant with a boy.
Advertisement
To make sense of the madness surrounding Yahoo, CEO Marissa Mayer, Chinese e-commerce behemoth Alibaba (whose shares Yahoo bought in 2005, profiting many times over) and all the related news, here is a quick Q&A to get you up to speed.
On a positive note contrasting the challenges facing her company, Yahoo’s Chief Executive Officer Marissa Mayer announced that she has given birth to identical twin girls.
On Wednesday, hours before giving birth, Mayer was explaining to the press the thinking behind Yahoo’s new spin-off plan. On December 7, its finance chief, Fran Shammo revealed that they have a deep interest in purchasing Yahoo Inc’s core business.
On Wednesday, Yahoo announced that it wouldn’t spin out Alibaba, and instead would spin out its internet businesses.
After his birth she took just two weeks off, sparking criticism that she was setting a bad precedent for working mothers at Yahoo.
A couple of news items are showing the long and complex relationship between Yahoo and Alibaba is far from over.
Smith said Yahoo is the only “Silicon Valley company we know that now has a stock price nearly entirely driven by the value of an entity outside of its control”, referring to the company’s stake in Alibaba.
Yahoo says Mayer may revise plans to pay shareholders billions of dollars from the sale and instead keep the windfall for other spending.
Even before the Alibaba backpedal, Mayer had promised to start off the new year with a reorganization that will jettison Yahoo’s least profitable services as part of housecleaning likely to pare Yahoo’s payroll from its current size of 10,700 employees. Over that time, Yahoo has seen its share of global online search and display advertising whittled down by competitors Google and Facebook to less than 5 per cent, according to research firm eMarketer.
Windsor called Mayer’s performance “awful” and said Yahoo is “massively underperforming its potential and is struggling to hold onto its executives”.
Advertisement
We wonder if the Zuckerberg baby and the Mayer twins will have playdates.
