Carol Bartz shoots back at Yahoo board

FORMER CEO of Yahoo Carol Bartz has given a profanity laced interview about being fired from the internet portal and advertising firm.

In an interview with Fortune magazine, Bartz said that she was dismissed during a phone call with chairman Roy Bostock.

"These people f***ed me over. I said: 'Roy, I think that's a script. Why don't you have the balls to tell me yourself?'," Bartz was quoted as saying.

She added that Yahoo's directors were "spooked by being cast as the worst board in the country" after they were criticised for turning down a deal to sell the firm to Microsoft in 2007. "Now they're trying to show that they're not the doofuses that they are," said Bartz.

In the Fortune interview, Bartz said that she plans to remain on the board. Yahoo said yesterday that Bartz must give up her seat.

On Wednesday this week Yahoo fired Bartz, effective immediately. The internet advertising outfit appointed CFO Timothy Morse as interim CEO.

Meanwhile, according to the Financial Times, activist investor Daniel Loeb has bought a significant stake in Yahoo and launched a campaign against the board following Bartz's dismissal.

The FT reports that Loeb's Third Point said in a regulatory filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission that it had amassed 5.1 per cent of the internet company's shares and that it had written to the board to argue that its chairman and three other board members should resign.

Loeb said, in letter to the board that was included in the SEC filing, that Bartz was a poor choice to start with, given her lack of consumer internet experience, and added that the board waited too long to fire her. µ