Yahoo Inc. named dark-horse candidate Scott Thompson, the president of eBay Inc.'s PayPal division, as its new chief executive.
The appointment comes after the Internet giant fired its last CEO, Carol Bartz, in September and has been run by the board and interim Chief Executive Tim Morse, who will resume his role as chief financial officer. At the time of Bartz's firing, Yahoo said it was looking at a range of strategic options, including the possible sale of all or part of the company.
All Things Digital, which is owned News Corp. along with this newswire, reported earlier Wednesday that the company was poised to make the move.
The company had attracted two partial investment bids from private equity firms, Silver Lake and TPG Capital, but shareholders were unhappy with the low prices of the deals.
Yahoo then moved to strike a tax-advantaged deal with its long disgruntled Asian partners, China's Alibaba Group and Japan's SoftBank, to sell back parts of its large stakes it owns there.
Those complex negotiations are ongoing and now look promising, which could yield Yahoo billions of dollars in capital if successful.
Under Thompson's leadership, PayPal solidified its lead as the global online payment service, expanding its user base to more than 104 million active users in 190 countries worldwide, increasing the number of merchant partners to more than 8 million globally, and growing revenue to more than $4 billion last year.
"Scott brings to Yahoo a proven record of building on a solid foundation of existing assets and resources to reignite innovation and drive growth, precisely the formula we need at Yahoo," Chairman Roy Bostock said, adding the company is considering a wide range of opportunities for its business, as well as specific investments or dispositions of assets.
Thompson will also join the board, effective Jan. 9.
Prior to PayPal, Thompson was executive vice president of technology solutions at Inovant, a unit of Visa Inc. formed to oversee global technology for the organization.
