Yahoo management team gets shakeup

SAN FRANCISCO – Yahoo Inc. is setting up a new chain of command amid the turmoil triggered by the embattled Internet icon’s snub of Microsoft Corp.’s $47.5 billion takeover bid.

Under the new pecking order announced Thursday, Yahoo executive vice presidents Hilary Schneider and Ash Patel are being given expanded responsibilities over the Sunnyvale-based company’s products and sales teams.

Schneider, a former newspaper executive, has been moving up the ranks since she joined Yahoo in September 2006. Patel has played a key role in developing many of Yahoo’s most popular products, including its finance section and instant messaging service, since joining the company 12 years ago.

Yahoo also is reorganizing its technology division in an effort to use its computing power more effectively and improve the coordination between its product developers and engineers.

This is the third time in 19 months that Yahoo has redrawn its management chart as it tries to snap out of a financial malaise that has ravaged its stock price, jeopardized its independence and demoralized employees.

This time, both of Yahoo’s top executives – co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang and President Susan Decker – are staying put despite shareholder unrest about the company’s recent decisions.

Decker said she and Yang had been working on the latest changes for several months as part of the company’s efforts to become a one-stop destination for online advertisers and build an even more appealing Web site for consumers.

The overhaul comes as the company tries to fend off a shareholder mutiny led by activist investor Carl Icahn and to fill a leadership vacuum created as dozens of senior managers and top engineers have left during the past year.