Co-founder Yang leaving Yahoo amid revenue woes

Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang is leaving the struggling company as it tries to revive its revenue growth and win over disgruntled shareholders under a new leader.

The surprise departure, announced Tuesday, comes just two weeks after Yahoo Inc. hired former PayPal executive Scott Thompson as its CEO.

Yang, 43, endorsed Thompson in his resignation from Yahoo’s board of directors. He had been on Yahoo’s board since the company’s 1995 inception.

“My time at Yahoo, from its founding to the present, has encompassed some of the most exciting and rewarding experiences of my life,” Yang wrote in his letter to Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock. “However, the time has come for me to pursue other interests.”

Financial-sector earnings put a damper on markets

U.S. stock gains slowed Tuesday as investors turned cautious on future financial-sector earnings in the wake of mixed results from Citigroup Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co.

“We had Citigroup on the downside and Wells Fargo on the upside, and in the battle between Citigroup and Wells Fargo, Citigroup won,” said Marc Pado, U.S. market strategist at Cantor Fitzgerald.

Scaling back from a 151-point jump, the Dow Jones industrial average advanced 60.01 points, or 0.5 percent, to 12,482.07, with JPMorgan Chase & Co. leading blue-chip decliners after the bankreported lackluster earnings Friday.

The S&P 500 index climbed 4.58 points, or 0.4 percent, to 1,293.67. The Nasdaq composite added 17.41 points, or 0.6 percent, to 2,728.08.

Average age of vehicles grows to record 10.8 years

That clunker in America’s driveway has reached a record old age, but there are signs that people may be growing confident enough in the economy to get a whiff of that fresh new car scent very soon.

The average age of a car or truck in the U.S. hit a record 10.8 years last year as job security and other economic worries kept many people from making big-ticket purchases such as a new car.

That’s up from the old record of 10.6 years in 2010, and it continues a trend that dates to 1995, when the average age of a car was 8.4 years, according to a study of state vehicle registration data by the Southfield, Mich.-based Polk automotive research firm.

Preparing to split business, Kraft Foods to cut 1,600 jobs

Kraft Foods Inc. says it will cut 1,600 positions in North America this year as it prepares to split its business in two.

The Northfield, Ill.-based food company said Tuesday that it plans to eliminate the positions throughout the U.S. and Canada primarily from sales, corporate and other business units. It will not reduce its manufacturing. About 20 percent of the job eliminations are currently open positions.

Kraft is also going with two U.S. management centers for its grocery business instead of four.

Drugmakers halt testing of potential Alzheimer’s drug

In a major setback for patients and doctors, drugmakers Pfizer Inc. and Medivation Inc. have halted development of a potential Alzheimer’s disease treatment after the drug for a second time yielded disappointing results in a late-stage clinical study.

Dimebon was furthest along in testing among the experimental Alzheimer’s drugs being developed to try to stop or even reverse the course of the mind-robbing disease. Dimebon would have been the first such drug.

Pfizer and Medivation said Tuesday that Dimebon failed to significantly improve cognitive ability and self-care in patients with mild-to-moderate cases of the disease. The study involved about 1,000 patients who had Dimebon added to their ongoing treatment with Pfizer’s former blockbuster Alzheimer’s drug donepezil, or Aricept.

– From news service reports