Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz Sells $2 Million YHOO Shares

Investors unhappy as Yahoo boss Bartz earns $2m from share sales from the Guardian reports that Yahoo’s CEO sold $2 million worth of shares since March of this year. Clearly, Yahoo investors are not happy that the CEO would make such a significant sale when the company continues to struggle to find its place.

The Guardian reports the sales were made in March and June for the amounts of $830,000 and $1.14 million respectively. Yahoo’s General Manager, Mike Callahan, has sold $1.35 million in shares this past year.

Yahoo investor, Eric Jackson of Ironfire Capital, said “Two million already cashed out for Bartz is too much, too soon.” He added that it “doesn’t really fit with her ‘I didn’t need this job as I was retired’ image she portrays”.

Of course, we cannot forget that the most public Yahoo investor and board member, Carl Icahn has dropped 12 million shares of Yahoo recently. All this doesn’t make Yahoo look all that attractive in the near or long term future.

Postscript: In Danny’s live blogging coverage of the Yahoo “It’s You” Press Conference, someone asked Bartz about this news. She responded that she did not sell a penny of Yahoo stock. What people saw was that some of the stock she received were vested and held for tax purposes. She explained, “Like if you got 100 shares, 20 would be held back. But it gets recorded as if it is a share.”

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.