Yahoo had barely pressed the return key Monday evening on its search for a new chief executive before an army of bloggers and analysts began returning results with names of possible replacements for Chief Executive Jerry Yang. Shortly after midnight, influential technology journalist Kara Swisher of All Things D anointed Peter Chernin, the president of News Corp., as the front-runner, along with nine other possible candidates, kicking off a coast-to-coast conversation about the possibility of boardroom high jinks at one of the Internet’s most popular sites.
Belief that the new CEO would successfully conclude a deal with Microsoft fueled a buying spree Tuesday, as investors snapped up Yahoo’s stock, sending it soaring as much as 17 percent before it closed at $11.55, up 92 cents.
Yahoo’s stock had fallen to a five-year low of $10.34 last week after Google withdrew from an agreement to sell advertising on Yahoo’s behalf. Investors have grown increasingly disgusted with the company’s management and Yang in particular after he rejected numerous offers from Microsoft to acquire the company or just its search business, including an offer to buy Yahoo for $47.5 billion.
Yahoo’s current market cap is $16 billion.
Who would be the right person to set Yahoo back on course?
“It’s an intriguing question,” said Ryan Jacob, portfolio manager of the Jacob Internet Fund.
“Do you go with someone with a lot of Internet experience? I don’t think bringing in another Terry Semel is the right move. Nor do I think bringing in someone with little operational experience makes sense.”
Like Semel, who ran Yahoo from April 2001 to June 2007, Chernin is a powerful media executive who is reportedly feeling restless in his current post. Other possible candidates being bandied about include Jon Miller, the former CEO of AOL, and Ross Levinsohn, former president of Fox Interactive Media.
One candidate that insiders have confirmed is Sue Decker, the president of Yahoo. But there is near-unanimous agreement that promoting Decker would be a mistake. “I think it is necessary for them to bring in someone from the outside,” said Allen Weiner, an analyst with Gartner.
Kathy Sharpe of Sharpe Partners, a digital marketing agency in New York City, said she would like the board to consider Marc Andreessen, the Internet pioneer who co-founded Netscape, which was sold to AOL for $4.2 billion, and Loudcloud, which was sold to Hewlett-Packard for $1.6 billion. More recently Andreessen co-founded Ning, which lets users build their own social network.
In addition to hiring Andreessen, Sharpe suggested Yahoo also buy Ning since “they completely missed the social-networking boat.”
Brad Williams, a spokesman for Yahoo, fended off talk about Yang’s replacement.
“It’s premature to speculate about possible candidates,” Williams said.
Yahoo has hired the executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles. A source familiar with the board said no one has been brought in for interviews.
Still, Trip Chowdhry, an analyst with Global Equities Research, is hoping the board opens up to outside advice. Chowdhry said he would like to see a candidate with experience running Apple or Oracle, two companies that have dominated extremely competitive markets.
“If they can’t get those people, the stock will go to zero,” he said.
One thing the board should not do, Chowdhry said, is appoint one of its own members. Maggie Wilderotter, chairman and chief executive of Frontier Communications, and a former senior vice president at Microsoft in charge of the “worldwide public sector” is one name that has come up.
Swisher reported that John Chapple, another board member and the former chief executive of Nextel Partners, has been chatting up Yahoo executives.
“I don’t think any of these board members makes any sense,” Chowdhry said, noting that Chapple’s main achievement was selling Nextel to Sprint. If he heads Yahoo, “it probably will be sold to another loser company.”
Contact Elise Ackerman at eackerman@mercurynews.com or (408) 271-3774.
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