Scott Thompson (born November 13, 1957) is an American businessman, and currently

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

Tuition.io Tuition.io is an American company that enables other companies to provide employer-paid student loan contributions as an employee benefit. The company is headquartered in Santa Monica, California. Tuition.io's customers include Fidelity Investme ...

. Previously, he was chief executive officer of ShopRunner.

Early life and education

Thompson was born November 13, 1957, in

Taunton Taunton () is the county town of Somerset, England, with a 2011 population of 69,570. Its thousand-year history includes a 10th-century monastic foundation, Taunton Castle, which later became a priory. The Normans built a castle owned by the ...

, Massachusetts, and grew up in nearby Raynham. He was an

accounting Accounting, also known as accountancy, is the measurement, processing, and communication of financial and non financial information about economic entities such as businesses and corporations. Accounting, which has been called the "languag ...

major from

Stonehill College Stonehill College is a Private college, private Catholic church, Roman Catholic Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Easton, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1948 by the Congregation of Holy Cross and is located on ...

, a private Catholic school in Easton, Massachusetts.

Career

Visa

Thompson has also worked as executive vice president of Technology Solutions for Inovant, a

subsidiary A subsidiary, subsidiary company or daughter company is a company owned or controlled by another company, which is called the parent company or holding company. Two or more subsidiaries that either belong to the same parent company or having a s ...

Visa Inc. Visa Inc. (; stylized as ''VISA'') is an American multinational financial services corporation headquartered in San Francisco, California. It facilitates electronic funds transfers throughout the world, most commonly through Visa-branded cred ...

that oversees the company's global technology. At Inovant, he was responsible for all development, support, and maintenance of Visa's global payment system. He was also chief information officer at

Barclays Global Investors BlackRock, Inc. is an American multi-national investment company based in New York City. Founded in 1988, initially as a risk management and fixed income institutional asset manager, BlackRock is the world's largest asset manager, with trill ...

, where he implemented a technology platform and global infrastructure, but was fired for alleged disagreements about strategy. In addition, he worked for

Coopers & Lybrand PricewaterhouseCoopers is an international professional services brand of firms, operating as partnerships under the PwC brand. It is the second-largest professional services network in the world and is considered one of the Big Four accounting ...

, delivering information technology solutions to leading financial services clients such as

Wells Fargo Wells Fargo & Company is an American multinational financial services company with corporate headquarters in San Francisco, California; operational headquarters in Manhattan; and managerial offices throughout the United States and intern ...

PayPal

Thompson started working for

PayPal PayPal Holdings, Inc. is an American multinational financial technology company operating an online payments system in the majority of countries that support online money transfers, and serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper ...

as senior vice president and chief technology officer, where he oversaw information technology, product development, and architecture. In 2008, he became the president of PayPal.

Yahoo!

Yahoo! hired Thompson as CEO in January 2012. In early April 2012, Thompson announced and executed a plan to reduce

Yahoo! Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Man ...

's 14,000 employees by 2,000, or 14% of the workforce. Several executives left Yahoo! just before the

layoff A layoff or downsizing is the temporary suspension or permanent termination of employment of an employee or, more commonly, a group of employees (collective layoff) for business reasons, such as personnel management or downsizing (reducing the ...

s began. On March 14, 2012, Yahoo! filed a

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A p ...

lawsuit - A lawsuit is a proceeding by a party or parties against another in the civil court of law. The archaic term "suit in law" is found in only a small number of laws still in effect today. The term "lawsuit" is used in reference to a civil actio ...

against

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...

over ten patents. Facebook responded with a

countersuit In a court of law, a party's claim is a counterclaim if one party asserts claims in response to the claims of another. In other words, if a plaintiff initiates a lawsuit and a defendant responds to the lawsuit with claims of their own against th ...

College degree controversy

On May 3, 2012, activist investor

Dan Loeb Daniel Seth Loeb (born December 18, 1961) is an American investor, hedge fund manager, and philanthropist. He is the founder and chief executive of Third Point, a New York-based hedge fund focused on event-driven, value-oriented investing with $ ...

, CEO of

Third Point Third Point Management is a New York-based hedge fund founded by Daniel S. Loeb in 1995. The firm operates as an employee-owned and SEC-registered investment advisor with approximately $16 billion in assets under management . As of December ...

LLC, sent a letter to Yahoo's board of directors and made the contents of the letter public in a press release. The letter cites a Yahoo! SEC filing stating that Thompson "holds a Bachelor's degree in accounting and computer science" from Stonehill College and that Loeb had reason to believe that the degree was "in accounting only". Loeb questioned if Thompson had "embellished his academic credentials" and questioned if the board had "failed to exercise appropriate diligence and oversight in one of its most fundamental tasks – identifying and hiring the Chief Executive Officer." The basics of hiring the chief executive officer were subsequently overlooked. Yahoo!'s filings with the SEC stated that Thompson "holds a Bachelor’s degree in accounting and computer science from Stonehill College". However, the 2008–10 proxy statements of

eBay eBay Inc. ( ) is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California, that facilitates consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer sales through its website. eBay was founded by Pierre Omidyar in 1995 and became a ...

, Thompson's former employer, only noted an accounting degree.

initially acknowledged the misstatement as "an inadvertent error", then subsequently began an investigation. Stonehill College responded to press inquiries by stating that Thompson was granted a B.S.B.A. degree in accounting. On May 13, 2012, Yahoo! issued a press release stating that Thompson was no longer with the company, and would immediately be replaced on an interim basis by

Ross Levinsohn Ross B. Levinsohn (born 1962/1963) is an American media executive who has worked in media and technology. He is the CEO of The Arena Group and ''Sports Illustrated'', and has held senior roles at Yahoo, Fox Interactive and Tribune Publishing, in ...

, recently appointed head of Yahoo's new Media group.

ShopRunner

Thompson joined the online-shopping service ShopRunner as CEO in July 2012 and left in July 2016.

Awards

In 2011, Thompson received the

Ernst & Young Ernst & Young Global Limited, trade name EY, is a multinational professional services partnership headquartered in London, England. EY is one of the largest professional services networks in the world. Along with Deloitte, KPMG and Pricewaterh ...

Entrepreneur of the Year Award for financial services for

Northern California Northern California (colloquially known as NorCal) is a geographic and cultural region that generally comprises the northern portion of the U.S. state of California. Spanning the state's northernmost 48 counties, its main population centers incl ...

Cancer diagnosis

In 2012, Thompson was diagnosed with

thyroid cancer Thyroid cancer is cancer that develops from the tissues of the thyroid gland. It is a disease in which cells grow abnormally and have the potential to spread to other parts of the body. Symptoms can include swelling or a lump in the neck. C ...

, which was said to be a reason for leaving Yahoo!. By July 2012, he was given a clean bill of health.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Thompson, Scott 1957 births American technology chief executives American corporate directors Directors of Yahoo! Living people PayPal people Stonehill College alumni Yahoo! employees EBay employees People who fabricated academic degrees People from Taunton, Massachusetts American chief technology officers Chief information officers People from Raynham, Massachusetts