Carol Bartz SLAMS Yahoo board for firing her

Yahoo!'s fired chief executive officer Carol Bartz blasted the online media company's board of directors in a no-holds-barred interview with Fortune magazine, calling the people who fired her 'doofuses'.

Bartz told Fortune, "These people f-----d me over," in the interview which is her first interaction with the media ever since she was fired over the phone by Yahoo! chairman Roy Bostock.

In the interview, Bartz mentioned that Bostock read out a statement prepared by a lawyer to her over the phone.

"I said, 'Roy, I think that's a script. Why don't you have the balls to tell me yourself?'" she told Fortune during the interview.

When the Yahoo! chairman had read out the pink slip to her, Bartz told him, 'I thought you were classier.'

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Bartz was brought on board two years ago to turn around the company's troubled fortunes.

Under a 'leadership reorganisation' move, the California-based company on Tuesday had announced that its board of directors has appointed Morse as interim CEO with immediate effect, replacing Bartz, "who has been removed by the board from her role" as CEO.

In an e-mail message to employees titled 'Goodbye', Bartz, 62, said she is "very sad to tell you that I have just been fired over the phone by Yahoo's chairman of the board."

"It has been my pleasure to work with all of you and I wish you only the best going forward," she wrote.

Bartz, who joined Yahoo in January 2009, was tasked with revitalising the company, which had been suffering from stagnant growth and a decline in advertising revenue.

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Yahoo has also been facing a mass exodus of its key executives in the last one year, including senior vice-President David Ko, vice president of Media Jimmy Pitrao, head of revenue for North America Joanne Bradford and Yahoo vice president of social platforms Neil Sample.

Bartz's dismissal is not a major shock to Yahoo watchers as her departure has been speculated for more than a year.

The fired Yahoo! CEO said that the company's board, despite having been told earlier that there would be no substantial revenue till 2012, insisted on this. In its impatience the board fired her.

Bartz told Fortune that the board was also upset at having said no to the mouth-watering buyout offer of $47 billion made by Microsoft before she was made the CEO.

"The board was so spooked by being cast as the worst board in the country. Now they're trying to show that they're not the doofuses that they are," she said.

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Talking about the new Yahoo! CEO, Tim Morse, Bartz said: "He's a great guy."

A technology veteran, her salary at Autodesk was a whopping $500,000. During her tenure, the company diversified its product line and grew revenues from $285 million to $1.523 billion in FY06.

Bartz has worked with Sun Microsystems, most recently serving as vice president of worldwide field operations and an executive officer of the company.

Before joining Sun, she held product line and sales management positions at Digital Equipment Corporation and 3M Corporation.

She was named among the '50 Most Powerful Women in Business, Fortune, 2005'. In 2005,  the Wall Street Journal named her among '50 Women to Watch'. She was ranked among the 'World's 30 Most Respected CEOs' by in 2005. She also figured in the Forbes 'World's 100 Most Powerful Women' list in 2004 and 2005.

Bartz holds an honours degree in computer science from the University of Wisconsin.  She was granted an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from the New Jersey Institute of Technology, an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from William Woods University.