Yahoo hasn’t done overly well when it released its figures to the public. Their net profit for Q3 2008 was US$54 million down from US$151 million for the same period in 2007.

Overall revenue figure of SU$1.78 billion is only 1% increase from Q3 last year.

Yahoo has struggled compared to the like of Google, MySpace and Facebook. Seems like the worldwide crises have hit Yahoo! pretty hard as people close their wallets on advertising budgets.

The company announced that they expect “to reduce its global workforce by at least 10% during Q4 of 2008″. This will reduce their costs by approx $400 million. When asked during a phone interview when Yahoo! intends to do so, Jerry Yang, CEO of Yahoo!, said “We want to do it before the holidays”.

Yahoo is yet to get an approval from the US Justice Department in regards to their deal with Google and if it can go ahead. A decision is expected soon.

However, should the deal go through Yahoo would make millions (as I am sure Google would too). Over the last 3 months Yahoo!’s shares have dropped over 40%, but rose 7% (in after trading hours) when the layoffs were announced.

Maybe Microsoft can pull them out from this mess – this time at say $15 a share? Come on Steve Ballmer, make that phone call!

So the rumour goes around that more than 3,000 out of the 15,000 employees are expected to be axed from Yahoo!. But not without a party.

Yahoo! is throwing it’s annual multi-million dollar party in December – themed as a Las Vegas casino. The layoffs are rumoured to be around the 10th Dec, apparently days after the party will be held.

Why have a Las Vegas themed party costing millions – and then lay off your staff? I suppose Jerry wants to gamble that decision (no pun intended)

Not only that, but the rumour also states that the CFO is planning on cutting it’s employees’ severance package (that’s probably what’s paying for the holiday).

Recently, Rojeh Avanesian (Head of Finance, Yahoo! Santa-Monica media group) left and I suppose many more to follow on.