Yahoo Director Steps Down Over CEO’s Fake Degree

The director responsible for hiring Yahoo’s contrite CEO Scott Thompson has been forced to give up her seat at the company, reports Reuters.

Patti Hart, who led the search for the executive said that she would not stand for re-election to the Yahoo board. The move has been seen as an attempt to resolve the controversy surrounding Thompson’s alleged degree in computer sciences.

Yahoo has also launched an official investigation into the matter, headed by a three director special committee.

We don’t need no education

Thompson was appointed as CEO of Yahoo in January, in an effort to bring the ailing company back on track. His bio claims he studied computer science, but this degree wasn’t offered at Stone Hill College in Boston when he attended in 1979. According to documents, he studied business administration instead.

Yahoo confirmed last week that it published unverified information in Thompson’s bio. The same degree was also present in regulatory filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. It has also emerged that Thompson did not deny he had the qualification when asked about it in a 2009 interview.

The qualification has apparently been present on documentation since Thompson’s days at PayPal.

Hart had led the committee that hired Thompson. In a statement released on Tuesday, she said that she was leaving Yahoo’s board in order to “eliminate activities” that could interfere with her primary responsibilities as CEO of International Game Technology, another company she is involved with.

Hart will be the latest of a string of directors to step down from Yahoo’s board, amid investor discontent and underwhelming financial performance. After Hart’s term is finished, the Yahoo board will comprise of nine directors.

Earlier this week, Thompson issued an apology to Yahoo employees in response to accusations. However, he did not apologise for providing false information, talking about “how this issue has affected the company” instead.

The Yahoo board has appointed a special committee consisting of three directors, helped by a law firm, to conduct a thorough independent review of Thompson’s educational credentials.

Meanwhile Dan Loeb, a Yahoo shareholder and CEO of hedge fund Third Point who discovered the discrepancy, has begun his own legal proceedings to obtain the books and records relating to Thompson’s appointment. He has also called for the CEO to be fired – not the first time this has happened at Yahoo as Thompson followed previous CEO Carol Bartz who was fired in September 2011

Yahoo has struggled in recent years, with Microsoft failing in a £28.2 billion takeover bid in 2009, although it was rumoured to be still interested late last year.

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