CFO leaving as Yahoo revamps management

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(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-02-27 11:49

SAN FRANCISCO -- As part of management reshuffle, Yahoo Inc on Thursday announced that Blake Jorgensen, its chief financial officer (CFO), will be leaving the company.

Visitors rest under a Yahoo sign at the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, February 18, 2009. Yahoo Inc on Thursday announced that Blake Jorgensen, its chief financial officer (CFO), will be leaving the company. [Agencies]

Yahoo has initiated a search for successor of Jorgensen and he will remain with the company through a transition period, the Internet search giant said in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Jorgensen is the most senior executive to leave since Carol Bartz became Yahoo's new chief executive officer (CEO) on January 13 this year, replacing co-founder Jerry Yang.

Yang offered to step down in November last year after he rejected Microsoft's bid to buy Yahoo and failed to forge a partnership with Google. The decisions met with complaints from some shareholders.

Former Yahoo President Susan Decker, a candidate for CEO, resigned after she didn't get the job.

This week, Yahoo also announced the departures of Marco Boerries, its mobile business chief as well as its news unit chief Neeraj Khemlani.

"Today I'm rolling out a new management structure that I believe will make Yahoo a lot faster on its feet," Bartz on Thursday wrote in a posting on Yahoo's official blog.

"For us working at Yahoo, it means everything gets simpler. We'll be able to make speedier decisions, the notorious silos are gone, and we have a renewed focus on the customer," she said.

Describing her six-week experience in Yahoo as "a whirlwind tour," Bartz said she has been impressed by people there, but found "there's also plenty that has bogged this company down."

Yahoo will create a new customer advocacy group, Bartz announced in the posting, noting that she gets a lot of angry calls at her office from frustrated customers.

Bartz also promised to strengthen the Yahoo brand, which she called one of the company's biggest assets.

"Mention Yahoo practically anywhere in the world, and people yodel. But in the past few years, we haven't been as clear in showing the world what the Yahoo brand stands for. We're going to change that," she said.