Yang To Step Down As Yahoo CEO

The Internet company's Board of Directors has initiated a search for a new CEO, Yahoo said.

Yang has been CEO since June 2007. He took a lot of heat from investors earlier this year when he spurned an attempt by Microsoft to acquire his company.

Yahoo's share price on Monday closed at $10.63, slightly up for the day, but down from a daily high of $10.94. However, the company is currently trading at barely over one-third of its share price of February of this year, when Microsoft made an unsolicited bid of about $33 per share.

Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock is working with the company's independent directors and with Yang to assess potential candidates for CEO.

"Over the past year and a half, despite extraordinary challenges and distractions, Jerry Yang has led the repositioning of Yahoo! on an open platform model as well as the improved alignment of costs and revenues," said Roy Bostock, in a prepared statement.

"Jerry and the Board have had an ongoing dialogue about succession timing, and we all agree that now is the right time to make the transition to a new CEO who can take the company to the next level," Bostock added. "We are deeply grateful to Jerry for his many contributions as CEO over the past 18 months, and we are pleased that he plans to stay actively involved at Yahoo! as a key executive and member of the Board."