COO Dan Rosensweig and media &entertainment head Lloyd Braun will leave Yahoo as the company reorganizes into three new operating groups, all reporting to current CEO Terry Semel.
Yahoo’s reorganization into Audience, Advertiser & Publisher, and Technology Groups is very notable for its executive moves. While Yahoo needs to find someone to fill the leadership role for the Audience Group, and current CTO Farzad Nazem takes on the Technology Group role, CFO Susan Decker has taken the Advertiser & Publisher lead.
The company will bring in another CFO to take over for Decker, who has been regarded as a possible successor to Semel. Some Wall Street types may want the more market-knowledgeable Decker in Semel’s role sooner rather than later, which makes Yahoo’s next financial announcement a must-watch event.
“Now, I know what you’re thinking – this is all about peanut butter,” Semel wrote on Yahoo’s official blog. “Actually, we’ve been orchestrating this plan for a number of months as we envisioned the next phase of growth for the Internet.”
Although Semel covered the restructuring and Rosensweig’s departure in a statement and the blog post, Braun’s departure received no official mention.
That nugget of information showed up later courtesy of gossip site Valleywag, which posted the news of his exit. A Yahoo spokesperson later confirmed Braun’s exit.
Anonymous Yahoos commenting on Valleywag about Braun’s exit were equally effusive about him being pushed out of Yahoo’s Santa Monica offices. One characterized his work as “taking meetings with agents” and handing “shareholder’s cash to Mark Burnett.” Another described the response from his former subordinates as cheers, and said “Lloyd was the most computer-phobic, non-Internet aware person in all of Yahoo.”
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David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
