The stock continued to rise until Alibaba, which Yahoo had part-owned for a decade, went public. Investor and reporter William Cohan wrote in Bloomberg at the time that “saber-rattling by certain activist hedge-fund managers is designed to benefit them, not the companies they target or their customers”. Some 17 months later, its stock at $33 a share – up from about $13.50 when Loeb’s fund Third Point had begun buying them – Yahoo saw Third Point dump its stake, earning Loeb and his investors about $1bn. ![]() The move got activist investor Daniel Loeb, who had enthusiastically backed Mayer (and campaigned for the exit of the company’s last CEO, the tough-talking Carol Bartz) for a seat on the board. Mayer rose to leadership on a wave of approbation in 2012 when she was named CEO – a move that surprised analysts, who had expected interim CEO Ross Levinsohn to be formalized in the role. Yahoo declined to comment for this story. “AOL has done a good job of just calling it what it is: ‘We’re an ad tech company, and we’re going to go lowbrow.’ haven’t made the really hard decisions.” “Unfortunately, I think the market only responds to big game-shifting changes,” said one executive at a leading online video firm. But all that value is tied up in assets now potentially up for sale, and Yahoo’s still huge original core business remains deeply troubled. Shares are hovering around $35 this week after a spike on news of the potential sale of Yahoo’s assets, more than double the price when she started. ![]() But critics charge Mayer has failed to pick a direction in the three years since her elevation. Google’s 20th employee and a self-described “geek”, Mayer promised a “renewed focus on product innovation to drive user experience and advertising revenue”. Mayer arrived with much fanfare from Google with plans to restart the ailing tech company.
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