Fired Yahoo CEO Wants to Keep Board Seat

The fight is not yet over for recently fired Yahoo Chief Executive Officer Carol Bartz. Ms Bartz said she wants to keep her board seat on the tech firm, but a Yahoo statement said she could not keep the seat.

"Ms Bartz is obligated to resign from the Board and we expect her to do so," Yahoo spokesman for the board of directors Charles Sipkins was quoted by Reuters.

Her argument is that she was re-elected by Yahoo shareholders in subsequent yearly meetings to the CEO post after the initial Yahoo board appointment in 2009. Corporate governance expert Neil Minow opined that Ms Bartz could cite the election as having superseded her Yahoo contract which mandates her to resign from the board and all officership, directorship or fiduciary positions with Yahoo and its affiliates upon termination of employment or resignation.

Ms Bartz, to get back at Yahoo, used profane language in describing the board in an interview with Fortune magazine.

When she was fired over the phone, Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock read a lawyer's prepared statement while Ms Bartz was attending a Citigroup technology conference in New York.

"I said, 'Roy, I think that's a script... Why don't you have the balls to tell me yourself,'" Ms Bartz told Fortune interview.

She sees the board's firing her as its way of to redeem the body after the Yahoo board was criticized for rejecting a search partnership with Microsoft. The deal that Ms Bartz negotiated would have Yahoo paying Microsoft 12 per cent of search revenue income and limited current growth, but would help Yahoo long-term.

"Now they're trying to show that they're not the doofuses that they are," Ms Bartz told Fortune.

Ms Bartz, however, had kinder worse for temporary successor Tim Morse, whom she described as a great guy. But she insisted instead of Yahoo finding a long-term replacement, "They should bring me in. I know what to do."

Fortune, in another article, wrote that Ms Bartz interview could cost her $10 million because of a non-disparagement clause in her contract, which she apparently violated with her use of the "F" word.

That penalty, however, could be small compared to the $47.2 million yearly pay that Ms Bartz got in 2009 as Yahoo CEO. According to CBS News, Ms Bartz topped the list of the 10 highest-paid CEOs for that year based on calculations of Standard & Poor's 500 companies made by the Associated Press from proxy statements filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.