A Yahoo turnaround
Former Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz, for all her crassness, might still be atop the struggling tech giant had she delivered on a simple promise she made to investors: to grow revenues in the second half of 2011. Instead, Yahoo sales kept declining and Bartz got canned in September.
It's no secret that Yahoo struggles with the same problems it faced when Bartz took over: declining share of online search advertising markets; weakening display ad sales; and low morale among employees. Bartz's problem was betting things would get better even after she picked off most of the low hanging fruit -- she cut costs, sold off non-core businesses, and outsourced some of Yahoo's search operations to Microsoft.
With Yahoo's stock flat this year, Wall Street is still waiting on that promised turnaround.
