SAN FRANCISCO – A major shareholder of Yahoo on Monday legally requested internal documents about the controversial hiring of CEO, Scott Thompson.
The investment fund, Third Point LLC, took the unusual step as part of its effort to remove Thompson from office by an inaccuracy on his education.
After exposing the lie last week, Third Point on Monday began calling for a deadline for Thompson to be fired for misconduct. But the deadline passed without changes in the executive’s status.
Third Point wants to review Yahoo’s documents that might explain how much the board investigated on Thompson before hiring him in January. The investment fund said they are authorized to view the documents under the law of Delaware, where Yahoo is incorporated as a society.
So far, Yahoo has not responded to a request for comment.
In a collection of biographical data published for years, including his biography on the website of Yahoo, Thompson said that he “has a degree in Accounting and Computer Science”, awarded by Stonehill College.
But the truth is that his only academic degree is in Accounting, a fact that Third Point discovered and displayed in a trenchant letter to Yahoo’s board.
After the letter was published, Yahoo released a statement saying that the references to Thompson earning a BS in Computer Science were an “inadvertent error”.
However, it was a mistake that Thompson committed repeatedly. References to the non-existent degree in Computer Science from Thompson appear in the biography of the CEO published on the website of PayPal, the eBay subsidiary where he previously served as president.
