Yahoo shares jumped nearly 10 percent yesterday in the NASDAQ market, one day after co-founder of the Silicon Valley giant Jerry Yang announced that he is stepping down as chief executive.

Yang said Monday that he will step down once the struggling company finds a new chief executive, but he will remain on its board of directors.

The announcement came six months after Yahoo refused a US$47-billion merger offer from Microsoft and failed efforts to sell itself to other media giants.

Yahoo's stock price, which closed around 10.7 dollars a share, had plunged more than 60 percent since the 40-year-old Yang took over the post of chief executive last year in an effort to restore the company to its early glories as the Internet portal pioneer.

The final blow to Yang's leadership at the company came earlier this month when Google announced it was walking away from an advertising revenue-sharing deal with Yahoo, which would have given Yahoo a much needed financial boost.

The deal was once seen as a reason for Yahoo to refuse a merger with Microsoft, but US regulators have indicated that they are not happy with the deal in fears of too much influence for the market leader Google.