January 14, 2009 by James Oliver
Yahoo’s two month search for a new CEO ended on Tuesday with the announcement that seasoned technology executive Carol Bartz would take over in charge of the number two search engine. From her 14 year tenure as CEO at software company, Autodesk, Bartz has earned a reputation for revenue growth and straight-talking. However, it is thought that not all shareholders are thrilled with the move.
Apparently, some sectors of investors believe she lacks the web business know how to take on such a top job, there are also question marks around her deal making ability. It’s easy to understand why Yahoo investors would insist on the latter characteristic, previous CEO, Jerry Jang, was ousted largely based on his failure to pull off an advertising deal with Google and his rejection of a very generous buyout offer from Microsoft.
That said, Bartz increased Autodesk’s profits from $285 million dollars to $1.5 billion during her reign. Even taking into account the period of huge growth in the software industry at that time, that is still a very impressive achievement.
Bartz is taking over Yahoo at a difficult time to say the least, the company continues to lose staff and market share and remains a distant second in the search engine tables, with Microsoft and their deep pockets looking very capable of taking over. However, there are signs of hope, namely Yahoo’s new internet TV initiative which looks like it could be a real winner.
I suppose only time will tell whether Bartz can make the difference.
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