Yahoo’s chief executive, Scott Thompson, has stepped down and “left the company” after four months on the job. Whether Thompson left on his own accord or was pushed remains unclear. It began when Dan Loeb, founder of Third Point, which has a 5.8% stake in Yahoo, wanted more seats on Yahoo’s board. When Yahoo refused, Loeb fired back with allegations that Thompson had not been awarded a computer science degree at Stonehill College as was claimed on his Yahoo biography. Thompson did earn an accounting degree from Stonehill, a Catholic school near Boston, however he did not earn a computer science degree. Yahoo is calling it an “inadvertent error.” The erroneous biography was made only more suspicious after it was ported from eBay pages while he was at the company. Despite having ample opportunities to correct the mistakes, even when interviewed in person, Thompson failed to do so. Yahoo pulled the biography from its website within hours of Loeb’s allegations, but it didn’t escape SEC filings.
