Yahoo is reportedly ready to name PayPal President Scott Thompson CEO, according to AllThingsD. The news could come as early as this morning.
Sources close to the situation suggest that Thompson, who currently run’s eBay’s online payments system after it was acquired by the auction giant in 2002, would replace interim chief executive Tim Morse.
Morse, who had previously been Yahoo’s chief financial officer, has been running the show since Bartz was fired by the board in September last year.
While the board had considered selling off the company, it now looks as though Thompson — if named in the near future — could revamp Yahoo.
But the decision to replace Bartz has seemingly always been the plan, even if the board decided to explore alternate options.
Both Silver Lake and TPG Capital offered bids for Yahoo late last year, but shareholders were unhappy by the deals they were given.
Even Microsoft appeared for a time to be considering an acquisition deal of the web portal giant, stoked by a non-disclosure agreement a month later. This deal would have given Microsoft the chance to closer inspect Yahoo’s books to determine whether a deal would be fruitful for both partners.
Shares in Yahoo rose after news broke that the company could receive a takeover bid from China’s biggest e-commerce site, Alibaba, along with Softbank, a Japanese telecommunications company.
Thompson’s resumé is impressive, serving as PayPal’s chief technology officer, and also working for a subsidiary of Visa overseeing its global technology vision. He was also chief information officer at Barclays Global Investors.
But as AllThingsD report, he is a “genuine Internet geek”, and recently “liked” Yahoo’s page on Facebook. A sign, surely?
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