Another top level Yahoo executive is leaving the troubled search company and the company has rushed to claim it is nothing to do with the resignation of CEO Jerry Yang.

Toby Coppel has announced he is quitting as executive vice president and managing director of Europe and Canada.  Yahoo said that his exit has been in the works for months and is unrelated to the recently announced resignation of Yahoo CEO or the fact that company's share price is sinking faster than a lead weight on the Titanic.

Coppel apparently is leaving the company with nowhere to go, which is what you do in the middle of a recession.  He said that his third child is about to be born. He joined Yahoo in 2001 and had been running its European operations for the past 18 months.

However, Coppel joins a long line of executives to leave the troubled search company after its rejection of Microsoft's unfriendly attempt to acquire Yahoo. Last week, Microsoft announced that it had hired Yahoo search executive Sean Suchter to be general manager of its Silicon Valley Search Technology Centre.