Yahoo chief quits after fake degree claim exposure

Yahoo chief executive Scott Thompson has quit – 10 days after it emerged that he fell short of on an academic qualification claimed in his personal résumé.(See: Yahoo chief Scott Thompson under cloud over false degree claim)

With the latest leadership crisis it has run into, the struggling US internet company has found itself forced to call a truce with dissident investor Third Point, which exposed the inflated claim that triggered the scandal. The New York hedge fund, which holds a 5.8-per cent stake in the company, would get three of the four board seats it had been pressing for, averting a standoff that would have come to a head at Yahoo's next annual meeting.

Thompson's exit comes less than five months after he was hired to revitalise the group to take on the likes of Facebook and Google in online advertising. The hallmark of his management style was impatience that was meant to shake Yahoo out of a drift into irrelevance, but his main contribution during his brief tenure was to press ahead with retrenchments with the cutting of another 2,000 jobs.

The Yahoo chief executive became the centre of a sudden storm after Third Point, running a check on his credentials, discovered that his sole degree was one in accounting, not the joint degree in accounting and computer science as claimed. Thompson came under increasing pressure after Yahoo initially tried to brush off the inaccuracy in his résumé, as an ''inadvertent error'', before retracting only hours later to say that its board was looking into the matter.

Yahoo's statement announcing the departure did not mention the cause, or whether Thompson had resigned or had been forced to quit. However, according to ''a person familiar with the situation'' quoted by the Financial Times, it was a ''mutual separation'' as both sides came to believe that his continuation at the company was untenable. He said they did not terminate him, he ultimately resigned.  It was not clear though, whether Thompson would be paid severance.

Meanwhile, Ross Levinsohn, head of Yahoo's media businesses, has been appointed interim chief executive to replace Thompson, according to the company. Levinsohn becomes the fourth person to hold the title in less than a year – and the fifth in little more than three years.