Yahoo Shareholder Wants CEO Marissa Mayer Ousted, Her Traces Erased

Asset manager SpringOwl suggests reviving Yahoo’s old logo and a high-profile San Francisco billboard to “send a message that the era of Marissa Mayer is now over”

marissa mayer yahoo
Marissa Mayer

A small Yahoo shareholder is calling for an overhaul that would remove CEO Marissa Mayer and wipe away the hallmarks of her tenure.

New York hedge fund SpringOwl Asset Management, which holds a small, unspecified stake in Yahoo, presented the company with a lengthy turnaround plan that called for Mayer’s ouster and suggested reviving the company’s old logo in a signal that her era “is now over.”

The protest by SpringOwl is the latest in a chorus of shareholders exasperated by Mayer’s failure to re-energize Yahoo to the stature it held in the early days of the consumer internet. After taking the reins of the erstwhile tech giant in 2012 and attempting to refashion the company to focus on mobile, Yahoo said this month it planned to transform itself into little more than a shell holding onto a valuable stake in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, as it aimed to spin off its core business.

Yahoo declined to comment. SpringOwl didn’t comment beyond providing a copy of the presentation, which was previously reported by the Wall Street Journal.

SpringOwl’s presentation also included suggestions to cut 9,000 jobs and bring on an operations-focused executive to replace Mayer.

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