Long Time Board Member at Yahoo Resigns

Michael Moritz, a partner in Sequoia Capital

[rubble88]

Full-Text [reuters.com]

Yahoo said Michael Moritz, a partner in Sequoia Capital, was leaving the board to focus on "other business and investment opportunities." According to Sequoia Capital's Web site, Moritz serves as a director of 11 other companies.

Among those companies is search engine Google, which has a partnership with Yahoo but has been seen as an emerging competitor in certain areas. Yahoo's announcement in December that it would acquire search technology company Inktomi Corp. was seen by many as a first step to ending the Google deal.

Yahoo said Moritz would be replaced on its board by Bobby Kotick, the chief executive of video game publisher Activision Inc. ATVI.O . Kotick is also on the board of directors of software vendor Macromedia Inc.

[Brett_Tabke]

Hmmm, the IPO rumor mill should have a ball with this one. I could see looking at it both ways. If G was going to IPO, they might want to keep him around for strategic info purposes. If G wasn't going to IPO, then they didn't want the 'insider' around any longer. You make the call...

[note: Sequoia Capital, Moritz, Google, ipo]

[Tor]

Or maybe he simply wants to concentrate on:

"other business and investment opportunities."

. There doesen`t always have to be a hidden agenda (?) ;)

[Crazy_Fool]

could be that there's a "conflict of interests" what with yahoo buying ink and moritz being a director of google. i'll never understand why people are allowed to be directors of 2 directly competing companies at the same time. just doesn't seem ethical to me.

[EquityMind]

Ok Brett, I'll start. If Google was going to IPO this year, I doubt the underwriters would want one of Google's board members to also be a board member at what would now essentially be Google's biggest competitor - regardless of Yahoo's ownership stance in Google. Their ownership could be seen as passive but to have a board member at both companies would be seen as active thereby creating conflict. Could be a precurser to an IPO. Companies usually like to have their houses in order before they file their S1 statements (IPO registration filing). My 2 cents.

[HughMungus]

Can someone explain this to me? Remember, this guy is the CEO of Activision.

"We've had some conversations about gaming but Terry (Semel, Yahoo's chief executive) knows my opinion that online gaming is a long way away," Kotick said.

Huh? A long way away?