Yahoo Shares Steady After Surge On Alibaba Windfall

By David Zielenziger | September 19 2012 10:23 AM

Shares of Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO), the No. 3 search engine, rose only slightly Wednesday after rising more than 1 percent Tuesday after announcing plans to return $3 billion to shareholders by divesting half its stake in China’s Alibaba Group.

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Ross Levinsohn, the former interim CEO of Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO) has left the company after it hired Marissa Mayer from Google Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG) as its new chief executive, All Things D reported, suggesting the Silicon Valley giant's focus on its technology division over its media properties.

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In early trading, Yahoo shares rose 6 cents to $15.96, bringing the value of the Sunnyvale, Calif., company to nearly $19 billion. Yahoo, though, didn’t announce how it will return the money, either via a special dividend or by buying back shares.

The move comes slightly over a year after CEO Carol Bartz was fired and New York hedge fund Third Point Capital started to acquire its 5.8 percent stake in the company, which led to its obtaining three seats on the board of directors and the ouster of interim CEO Scott Thompson in May.

New CEO Marissa Mayer said she was still reviewing company operations, which also include potential firings of as many as 2,000 employees.