Scott Thompson joins Yahoo! as CEO from PayPal

Yahoo!, a
digital media company, announced the appointment of Scott Thompson as chief
executive officer.

 

The
company also announced that Tim Morse will resume his role as chief financial
officer. Thompson has also been appointed to the company’s Board of Directors,
effective January 9, 2012.

 

Thompson
served recently as president of PayPal, a division of eBay, where he continued
his established track record of growing businesses by driving customer
engagement built on strong technology platforms.

 

Under his
leadership, PayPal solidified its lead as the global online payment service, expanding
its user base from 50 million 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 revenues from $1.8 billion to $4+ billion in
2011.

 

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!. His deep understanding of online businesses combined
with his team building and operational capabilities will restore the energy,
focus, and momentum necessary to grow the core business and deliver increased
value for our shareholders. The search committee and the entire Board concluded
that he is the right leader to return the core business to a path of robust
growth and industry-leading innovation,” said Roy Bostock, chairman of the
Yahoo! Board.

 

With the
ultimate goal of delivering the value our shareholders expect, my immediate
focus will be on getting to know the entire team and hearing more from all
Yahoo!s, working closely with the engineers and product teams, and diving
deeply into our products and services to learn more about what our more than
700 million users find most engaging and useful. I will also be working
directly with our region leaders and sales teams globally to get a clearer
understanding of the needs of our advertisers and publishers. Clearly, speed is
important but we will attack both the opportunity ahead and the competitive
challenges with an appropriate balance of urgency and thoughtfulness. I cannot
wait to get started,” Thompson said.

 

Scott’s
primary focus will be on the core business, and as CEO and director, he will
work closely with the Board. As part of this process, Yahoo! is considering a
wide range of opportunities for the company’s business, as well as specific
investments or dispositions of assets.

 

By
Telecomlead.com Team