Finally, after years of mistakes, the board of Yahoo did something right. They've attracted veteran technology CEO Carol Bartz to replace hapless Jerry Wang as the CEO of Yahoo.
I have written two posts involving Bartz, here and here. The second linked post, from October of 2006, lauded Bartz as an unheralded, effective CEO. I wrote,
"In my opinion, however, Carol Bartz is the class of the class. She has created value consistently at Autodesk for 14 years, with the exception of some rough years in the late '90s. Even then, however, the company tended to tread water, and not lose substantial value for long time periods.
I think it does seem unfair that Bartz is not accorded the type of press that GE's Jack Welch received for his long-term performance. Blogger is not cooperating with the uploading of a price chart comparing GE and Autodesk over many years, but suffice to say, Bartz looks as good as Welch, when the two companies' performances are compared for the years in which they both were CEOs of their respective companies.
If Bartz is being ignored because of her gender, then that's even more bad news to add to Alan Murray's contentions. Not only do poorly performing female CEOs, like Jill Barad, get spotlighted, but the rare excellent performers, like Bartz, are conveniently forgotten."
The nearby price chart of Yahoo for today indicates that there was initial disappointment by Yahoo investors at the news, even allowing for the S&P500's down opening.
Additionally, the Wall Street Journal ran at least one piece critical or questioning of Bartz' ability to sort the Yahoo mess out.
I disagree. Emphatically.
I don't know what Carol Bartz will decide to do to create or extract maximum value from Yahoo for its shareholders. But I am confident that, whatever it is, it will be as good as, or better than others would have done.
To her credit, Bartz was quoted as saying she had,"a lot of ideas " regarding what to do at Yahoo, but "It would be very presumptuous for me to do so on my first day on the job and I am not going to do so."
How very adult and professional! Yahoo shareholders must be shocked at the new quality of management at the firm. If I were one, I'd feel very comfortable with the image of Bartz across a table from the hulking Steve Ballmer in any upcoming discussions regarding search businesses, joint ventures, et. al.
At the same time, the firm is finally rid of Susan Decker. It didn't seem that she ever made a significant difference at Yahoo. Of the two, there's no question Bartz is the better choice to salvage whatever value can be at Yahoo at this very, very late date.
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