Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo!, has resigned from its board. Yang founded the company in 1995 with David Filo and was its chief executive from June 2007 until January 2009.
Mr Yang’s resignation comes two weeks after Yahoo hired former PayPal executive Scott Thomson to be its new chief executive. Mr Yang has also resigned from the boards of Yahoo Japan and Alibaba Group and said in a statement that the time had come to pursue other interests outside of Yahoo!.
Back in 2008, Mr Yang annoyed some shareholders by turning down a $47.5bn takeover offer from Microsoft. The company is currently valued at about $20bn.
Yahoo shares rose by 3.4% on the news of the resignation.