• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, May 13, 2012

Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson will reportedly step down after it was revealed this month he had misrepresented his academic credentials in his resume and regulatory filings.

According to the blog AllThingsD, the Yahoo board will meet Sunday to accept Thomson’s resignation and appoint Ross Levinsohn, the company’s global media head, as interim CEO. It will also select a new chairman and new directors, including three of those nominated by activist shareholder Daniel Loeb.

It was Loeb, manager of hedge fund Third Point, who exposed the error in Thompson bio listing a computer sciences degree that he never received. The five current directors, who were to leave at the company’s annual meeting this summer, will do so immediately, according to AllThingsD.

Yahoo initially dismissed the bogus computer science degree as an “inadvertent error” but Loeb kept up the pressure in a series of letters to the company’s board, demanding Thompson’s ouster. Last Tuesday, Yahoo appointed a three-person committee to investigate Thompson’s hiring and announced the resignation of board members Patti Hart, who led the search that led to Thompson’s hiring.

Thompson’s exit after joining Yahoo only four months ago to lead its latest turnaround would be another major setback for the Web portal as it seeks to keep up with competitors like Google and Facebook. It would also signal a big victory for Loeb in his proxy battle with Yahoo.