On the eve of her one-year anniversary at Yahoo, CEO Carol Bartz gives herself a passing grade, but says she should have moved faster in her efforts to reorganize the foundering company she took over from co-founder Jerry Yang, saying she was stymied because "It was a little tougher internally" than she'd expected.
Bartz told Bloomberg that she'd give herself a B-minus for the work she's done in her initial year; analysts say they'll wait and see what happens in the next year or two before deciding if the 61-year-old executive has done enough to repair the damage left by a failed attempt to establish an ad partnership with Google and the investor angst that surfaced after Yang turned down a $47.5 billion takeover bid from Microsoft.
After falling 48 percent in 2008, Yahoo's stock rebounded with a 38 percent gain in 2009 -- not quite as good as Google's, which more than doubled, a slightly behind the Nasdaq Composite Index, which grew 44 percent. And, while investors have been slow to buy into the new Yahoo, Bartz says she's optimistic.
“We came out of one of the worst climates ever,” Bartz told Bloomberg. “And if you look at growth of Fortune 500 companies, only being down 12 or 15 percent is damn good. I’m not going to apologize for our growth.”
For more:
- see this Bloomberg article
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