Yahoo Inc chief operating officer Henrique de Castro, the high-profile recruit Chief Executive Officer Marissa Mayer poached from Google Inc shortly after she took the helm, will leave on Thursday after about a year on the job.<\/p>\n
Yahoo did not give a reason for his departure in a Wednesday filing, but in an unusually blunt memo to Yahoo staff obtained by the Recode technology blog Mayer said she had fired him.<\/p>\n
“During my own reflection, I made the difficult decision that our COO, Henrique de Castro, should leave the company,” Mayer wrote in the memo.<\/p>\n
Yahoo declined to comment.<\/p>\n
De Castro’s departure marks a striking shift within Yahoo’s leadership ranks as Mayer continues to struggle to revive the company’s business one year-and-a-half into her tenure.<\/p>\n
At the time of de Castro’s hiring, Mayer was building a management team to try to revive flagging sales and traffic, and cited de Castro’s Internet advertising expertise as a key asset. The Lisbon-born executive, known for tough talk and a strong personality, was richly rewarded with a compensation package totaling $58 million when he was hired.<\/p>\n
The fact that Mayer managed to lure an executive from Google was viewed at the time as a sign that the new CEO had re-inspired confidence in the company.<\/p>\n
But Yahoo’s revenue growth has remained moribund. Revenue has declined between five percent and seven percent year-over-year in each of the first three quarters of 2013.<\/p>\n
De Castro will get severance benefits as laid out in his October 15, 2012 employment letter, including equity awards, according to the filing. A source familiar with the matter said that part of the severance package is based on performance metrics which have not yet been determined or approved by the company.<\/p>\n
De Castro could not immediately be reached for comment.<\/p>\n
Yahoo is one of the world’s most-visited online properties, but revenue has declined in recent years amid competition from Google and Facebook Inc. Mayer has built a senior leadership team and is now in the midst of engineering a turnaround at the once-dominant Web icon.<\/p>\n
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