Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) shares climbed almost 2% to close at $13.23 on Friday, the day after new CEO Carol Bartz slashed her way through the struggling company's management structure and instituted a major reorganization at the company.
Yahoo
Thursday bid adieu to chief financial officer Blake Jorgensen, and Bartz unveiled a simplified management structure designed to remove the so-called "silos" that often prevented the company from making swift decisions.
Wall Street seems to appreciate Bartz's own decisiveness. Bernstein Research analyst Jeff Lindsay said the difference between Bartz's idea of action and that of her predecessor, Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang, "couldn't be more pronounced."
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"Mr. Yang, the ultimate Yahoo! insider, who had been at Yahoo!
literally since its inception, generated a lot of excitement with his
100 day reveiw but then nothing much seemed to change," he wrote in a
research note Friday. "We are into day 45 of Ms. Bartz's new regime and
already the organization has been turned upon its head -- in a good
way."
He described the new management structure as "old-school"
and "inelegant," but still a vast imnprovement over Yahoo!'s previous
way of doing business. Lindsay also said he wasn't concerned about the
executive departures. Rather, the empty slots will make room for new
talent to move within Yahoo! or come in from outside the company, he
said.
"We think Yahoo! is finally on the right track, both strategically and organizationally," Lindsay wrote.
- Olaf de Senerpont Domis
