hr: Money

A number of senior Yahoo executives are leaving the Web company as it looks to improve earnings and convince investors it is worth at least as much as a bid it rejected from
Microsoft , a CNBC report said.

President Sue Decker is also considering a reorganization that would centralize Yahoo mail, search and homepage divisions into a global product organization, the Wall Street Journal reported, quoting people familiar with the matter.

TechCrunch on Thursday reported that three executives were leaving Yahoo, including Brad Garlinghouse, known for a 2006 “Peanut Butter Manifesto” memo which called for a radical overhaul of the company.

Garlinghouse oversaw services including e-mail and instant messaging. “I hate peanut butter,” he wrote.

Vish Makhijani, general manager of Yahoo’s Web search business, and Qi Lu, the top engineer for Yahoo’s Panama search marketing platform, also were leaving the company, said TechCrunch, which put together a spreadsheet of defections.

Yahoo said at the beginning of the week that Jeff Weiner, recently executive vice president of the network division, had left to work at venture capital firms.

Yahoo

turned down a $47.5 billion takeover offer from Microsoft

to sell search ads on its site.

It is now locked in a proxy battle with billionaire investor Carl Icahn, who launched a campaign in May to replace the company’s board after the failure of Microsoft’s bid.

The Journal said Decker wanted to improve coordination between product teams and global sales groups, but gave few details.

Yahoo also wants to build so-called social networking into products, reflecting the need to catch up with relative upstarts such as Facebook.

Yahoo did not respond directly to requests for confirmation about executives’ departures, but said in a statement it had a “deep and talented management team”.