14 DAY TRIAL // The long-awaited Microsoft deal has most Yahoo shareholders less than pleased. Many believe that it could have been on much better terms and were expecting an up-front payment of up to several billions. And now they have even more reason to be displeased, after it was revealed that the Internet giant's new CEO, Carol Bartz, brought in to make some much-needed changes and restructuring at the company, has sold several million dollars' worth of shares since she came in.
As The Guardian reports, the transactions were disclosed in several regulatory filings and the CEO is now known to have made two major sales in the past nine months since she came in. The first sale came in March, just shortly after she was put in charge of the company, and was worth $830,000, and the second one was completed in June, when she sold stock worth $1.14 million.
Several other high-level executives at the Internet company also sold shares amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars, and Mike Callahan, Yahoo's general counsel, has also disposed of $1.35 million worth of stock options.
Yahoo has said that the CEO's sales were tax-related and the executives are, of course, more than entitled to sell their shares, but the issue with investors is that it sends a wrong message to a company that has been trying to get more focused and lose some excess fat. Carol Bartz has created a clearer strategy for Yahoo and is being portrayed as an efficient ruler focused on cutting costs and getting the ball rolling again. In an internal memo acquired by The Guardian last week, she stressed this:
"We are the largest media property on the internet." "So get out of the sugar low – we have work to do. Stop staring at our navels, stop arguing with each other. Stop debate, debate, debate and let's focus on the competition."