Yahoo! will announce details of a major reorganisation in an attempt to steady the besieged internet portal that has lost a number of high-level executives while fighting off a $47.5 billion takeover bid by Microsoft, the software giant.

It is hoped the restructure, which will centralise several product groups and is due to be announced next week, will fill holes created by the departure of senior managers.

Under plans being drawn up by Susan Decker, president at Yahoo!, several of the company’s divisions, including mail, search, social networking and 'home page', will be brought together in one central 'global products' group, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The company is also seeking to improve communication between its product and overseas sales groups.

Yahoo!'s senior management has been hit by a series of departures in recent weeks - at precisely the time when it is under intense pressure to increase its earnings and prove to shareholders that it is worth more than the $47.5 billion Microsoft was willing to pay for the company.

This week Jeff Weiner, executive vice president of Yahoo!'s network division, announced he would be leaving.

His resignation followed that of another vice president Usama Fayyed, and the co-creators of the photo-sharing site Flickr - Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake - which Yahoo bought in 2005.

Several other senior executives are also reported to be leaving the company, including Vish Makhijani, senior vice president of search, who is said to be about to join the Russian search engine Yandex, as well as Qi Lu, executive vice president for search and advertising technology group.

It has also emerged that Joshua Schachter, the founder of the bookmarking site delicious, which Yahoo acquired for $35 million in 2005, had also handed in his notice.

Mr Schachter was quoted by the technology blog Techcrunch as saying: "I was largely sidelined by the decisions of my management. It was an incredibly frustrating experience."

In a statement, Yahoo! said: "We have a deep and talented team across all areas of the company. We continue to recruit outstanding talent."

According to the Wall Street Journal, the new global products group will be headed up by Ash Patel, who is current in charge of Yahoo!'s platforms and infrastructure division and described as part of the 'old guard', having been at the company since 1996.

The entire US operation, meanwhile, will be run by Hilary Schneider, who is presently head of a division called global partners. Ms Schneider will also take charge of ad sales, and will report directly to Ms Decker along with Mr Patel.

Yahoo is understood to have pushed the changes through ahead of its annual shareholder meeting on August 1 to show that it is trying to rebuild momentum in the wake of Microsoft's failed bid.

Many shareholders have grown restless, and Carl Icahn, the billionaire activist investor, has threatened a proxy fight to remove Yahoo!'s current board and management.

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