Yahoo Picks A New CFO Likely To Shake Things Up

MICHAEL LIEDTKE

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Yahoo Inc. has hired a cost-cutting specialist as its new chief financial officer, signaling the Internet company's determination to weed out the bureaucracy that has been dragging down its profits for the past three years.

The Sunnyvale-based company said Thursday that it had lured Tim Morse away from Altera Corp., a computer chip maker based in nearby San Jose. He became Altera's CFO in 2007 after a 15-year career at General Electric Co., where he held various jobs.

Morse's hiring ends Yahoo's 3½-month search to replace its current CFO Blake Jorgensen, who announced his plans to leave a few weeks after the company hired Carol Bartz as its new chief executive.

Since she took the job in January, Bartz has been focused on streamlining Yahoo's management as she tries to remove stumbling blocks that have contributed to the company's inability to keep pace with more nimble rivals such as Internet search leader Google Inc. and the online social hangout Facebook Inc.

Morse seems likely to shake things up even more at Yahoo, said Global Crown Capital analyst David Wu.