On average shareholder activism is good for share prices. Your assumption seems bad without more info. In particular, the fact that he led the push to hire mayer in the first place means that his net contribution to yahoo is probably positive.
Shareholder prices, right. That's one metric, and the wrong one to follow IMHO if you want to innovate and grow. Firing 12,000 people would have been devastating for morale of the company, even if Marissa bought other good talent and companies - and other problems with it too.
Point taken, but if you're referring to Loeb's firing plan that Mayer supported, the firing would have been towards roughly 2,400 - 3,600 workers, not 12,000.
From the article:
"... Loeb’s plan was to fire between 20 percent and 30 percent of Yahoo!’s roughly 12,000 workers — an idea Mayer initially supported ..."
Edit: yep, I agree it's still a lot, just wanted to point out the difference.
> Firing 12,000 people would have been devastating for morale of the company
Yes, especially since that would mean firing every employee of the company:)
I can see that being a bad day for moral....
All joking aside, I think your point is pretty solid. Getting rid of a 1/3 of the work force was not going to send a positive message to the rest of the employee's.
Honestly the Meyer hire alone sent the stock price up before she did a single thing as CEO, so this move can also easily be seen as what could have easily been a short term stock price inflation move.
