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I don’t think Yahoo will be able to find a CEO to turnaround the company. For one reason why, the company is beyond repair unless it fires the entire board. Hence, from a turnaround perspective the only choice left open to the next CEO is to sell off pieces of the company or sell it off as a going concern.
The tragedy of this mess is that this all could have been avoided in 2008.
The board should be running a parallel effort to find a buyer for the company.
Rumors are that Jack Ma is interested in the company. Here is my advice to Jack Ma, fire the entire board, its chairman, and all of the remaining founders once you secure control of the company. The amount of damage this group of YAHOOS has done to Yahoo is unconscionable.
As for the CEO search effort, there are plenty of solid candidates out there who can sell Yahoo. If Yahoo’s board finds a CEO with consumer experience that would mean the board has a business strategy or the board is simply suing the word consumer because that is what the mainstream media is saying. In other words, the board is simply saying and doing whatever it can to make it look like it knows what it is doing. If you read closely what the Yahoo spokesperson said it was all sound bites and media babble. It’s called CYA.
My suggestion to the board is that rather than burning through time and money looking for a new CEO and pretending you will be able to develop and execute a viable business plan, sell the company to Jack Ma or Carl Icahn and let them hire their own CEO and develop their own strategy. If the current board of Yahoo continues down the stellar path of success it has laid for the last 4 years, we could be seeing a lot of time wasted on something the new owners will have to tear down. This board's track record is horrible. The decisions the board and its chairman have made have all resulte din lost time and wasted money. I recognize the board's CEO search for what it is: a show for the mainstream press and their shareholders.
If Yahoo’s board wants to maintain and even strengthen the company’s value, it should leave well enough alone and not do a darn thing. If a buyer has to tear down what this board has done or hired as CEO, that work will be deducted from the sales price. My advice to the board is focus on selling the company and not waste your shareholders' time and money on CEO searches that will result in lost time and money.