Shares of Yahoo initially spiked, then ended the day down nearly 1% to $12.10, after news came out that Yahoo chose former Autodesk CEO Carol Bartz to become Chief Executiv of the struggling Internet giant.
Clearly, the market isn’t that excited by the 60-year-old software executive. One analyst – Jeff Lindsay at Bernstein – wrote out his concerns:
“While we think Ms. Bartz has been a good CEO at Autodesk, a B2B software company, we question the logic of her selection… She is just keeping the seat warm until a deal is done with Microsoft. If so, we hope that a full acquisition of the business is being contemplated, and not just a search deal – because finding a strategy for Yahoo without search would likely be an even greater challenge for a new CEO.
If there is no impending deal with Microsoft, then we think Ms. Bartz is not a natural choice of CEO to restructure Yahoo and drive it towards a new strategic vision for three reasons: a) she has no consumer or advertising background – Yahoo makes most of its money in the deeply troubled display advertising sector b) she has no direct international management experience – the European and Asia-Pacific regions have not been key drivers of Yahoo’s revenue growth as they have for competitors such as Google c) she has no obvious M&A experience – major Internet players like Google are completing one acquisition every 3-5 weeks.”
Lindsay goes on to say that Bartz is “safe but generally uninspiring.”
Ouch! Lindsay is harder on Bartz then I was on Terry Semel, when he became CEO of Yahoo years ago.
(Image source: CNet)
