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Updated Friday, January 6, 2012 0:19 am TWN, By Michael Liedtke , AP



	The Yahoo company logo is displayed at its headquarters in Sunnyvale, California, Wednesday, Jan. 4. Yahoo Inc. confirmed Wednesday it has picked PayPal chief Scott Thompson as its next CEO. (AP) More Photos (2)

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Yahoo picks PayPal's pocket to hire latest CEO

SAN FRANCISCO -- Yahoo's previous turnaround attempts have flopped under three different leaders with dramatically different backgrounds — former movie mogul Terry Semel, beloved Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang and profanity-spewing Silicon Valley veteran Carol Bartz.

Now, the struggling Internet company is making yet another unorthodox choice with Wednesday's announcement that it has lured away Scott Thompson from a lower-profile job running eBay's thriving PayPal service to step into the pressure-packed position as Yahoo's fourth CEO in less than five years.

The appointment raised questions among analysts, since Thompson, 54, has no experience in online content and advertising, Yahoo's chief sources of revenue. The timing of Thompson's hiring also came as a surprise, given that Yahoo's board has been considering a sale of all or part of the company since firing Bartz four months ago.

With Thompson's selection, Yahoo's board is signaling that it believes the company can still rebound, despite several years of losing ground to Google and Facebook in product innovation and online advertising.

Even so, a sale of Yahoo's most prized assets — its investments in Yahoo Japan and China's Alibaba Group — is likely. Softbank Corp., Yahoo Japan's largest shareholder, and Alibaba Group have proposed buying back most of Yahoo's holdings in the Asian companies in a deal valued at US$17 billion, according to published reports.

Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock dismissed recent speculation that Yahoo might team up with buyout firms to take the company private.

Thompson's job will be to revive Yahoo's revenue growth and repair the company's fractured relationship with investors fed up with a litany of broken turnaround promises.

Yahoo's stock hasn't traded above US$20 in more than three years. On Wednesday, it dropped 51 cents, or 3 percent, to close at US$15.78. Those are difficult numbers for stockholders to stomach, given that Microsoft Corp. offered to buy Yahoo in its entirety for US$33 per share, or US$47.5 billion, in May 2008.

“There is no shareholder or investor who will be less patient than me,” Thompson, a Boston native who still has his hometown accent 18 years after moving to California, said in an interview. “We have got to be able to grow this business. There is no question that is priority No. 1.”

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