Activist investor Carl Icahn is resigning from Yahoo's board of directors because he no longer has enough time to devote to the Internet company.
Shiho Fukada
Carl Icahn
In his resignation letter Friday, Icahn praised Yahoo's current CEO, Carol Bartz, whom the board hired in January to engineer a turnaround at the Sunnyvale company.
Bartz replaced Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang, whom Icahn had been trying to get fired before he negotiated a truce that put him on the company's board nearly 15 months ago.
Icahn sought Yang's ouster after he turned down an opportunity to sell Yahoo to Microsoft for $47.5 billion last year. Yahoo's market value now stands at $24 billion.
Icahn remains one of Yahoo's major shareholders with a 4.5 percent stake.
On Tuesday, Yahoo reported a profit that was higher than last year and which streaked past expectations. The earnings improvement was primarily driven by extensive cost cutting that has eliminated more than 2,000 jobs during the past year.