The latest reason it sucks to be Yahoo: New CEO Scott Thompson appears to have fudged his resume by claiming to hold a computer science and accounting degree he does not actually have. This truth is, he has a college degree, but his major was only in accounting.
The allegations were first made by activist Yahoo investor Dan Loeb, who questioned Thompson's credentials in a biting letter to the company's board. Thompson's official company biography and Yahoo filings with Securities and Exchange Commission both claimed Thompson held degrees in accounting and computer science. But Loeb said a “rudimentary Google search" showed the computer science degree to be fiction.
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Yahoo announced late Thursday that it had launched a probe and would report back to shareholders. There are a number of questions that must be answered, among them: Did Thompson himself insert the false claim? If so, when? How did Yahoo's hiring committee not discover the discrepancy? Did anyone else know Thompson does not in fact hold a computer science degree?
Loeb sent another letter to the Yahoo board on Friday, calling the company's response to the discovery about Thompson's resume "height of arrogance." Loeb also made an ominous point in the Friday letter.
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"Mr. Thompson and the Board should make no mistake: this is a big deal," Loeb wrote. "CEO’s have been terminated for less at other companies."
One argument could be made that Thompson's decades of corporate success outweigh a false resume claim. But others might see it as raising larger ethical concerns about how fit he is run a major, publicly traded company.
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Scott Thompson's Resume Was Padded. Now What?
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
This story originally published on Mashable here.
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