Not a surprise after how he left: Terry Semel is leaving Yahoo’s (NSDQ: YHOO) board; this is his last day. “Semel initiated discussions with the Board several months ago about stepping down from the Chairman role once the Board was able to identify a successor. He targeted the time of the January Board meeting for his departure...Roy Bostock, who has been a member of the company’s Board since May 2003, was unanimously elected by the board to serve as Yahoo’s non-executive Chairman.”

Semel joined Yahoo in 2001 as chairman and CEO, relinquishing the CEO title during a June shake-up to co-founder Jerry Yang and becoming non-executive chairman of the board. We reported earlier this month that Semel is pumping up his own company, Windsor Media; most recently, reports have surfaced that he may be interested in acquiring a movie studio.

-- Bostock is a former chairman and CEO of D’Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles and its successor, The MacManus Group. He’s also on the board of Morgan Stanley and is currently chairman of the board of Northwest Airlines Corp.

-- Semel’s departure leaves Yahoo with 10 board members, nine of them independent. The tenth is Yang.

Here’s the release, which includes a list of Semel’s accomplishments and only the slightest allusion to the issues facing Yahoo in his wake. More here and more to come.