Tech chief at Yahoo is retiring

Yahoo Inc. said Wednesday that Chief Technology Officer Farzad Nazem would retire, leaving two of the top executive posts at the company unfilled.

Nazem will leave June 8, Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo said. Co-founder Jerry Yang will oversee Yahoo’s technology group on an interim basis.

The resignation comes after Chief Executive Terry Semel last year reorganized Yahoo into three groups to compete more effectively with Google Inc. Nazem headed the technology group and oversaw the introduction of a search-engine advertising program called Project Panama.

Yahoo has yet to name an executive to oversee another of its groups that focuses on products.

“They need all the best minds that they can have,” said Brian Bolan, an analyst at Jackson Securities in Chicago, who rates the shares “sell.” “They’re fighting tooth and nail against Google and almost everyone else.”

Nazem is leaving the company “absolutely of his own accord,” Yahoo spokeswoman Joanna Stevens said, adding that the move has been planned for “a number of months.”

“After spending the last 26 years in this fast-paced technology industry, I’ve finally decided it’s time to slow down,” Nazem said in a posting on Yahoo’s corporate blog.

Nazem wanted to wait until the Panama ad software was released before announcing his departure, the posting said.

Yahoo shares fell 40 cents to $27.98 in after-hours trading. They earlier fell 2 cents to $28.38.