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Yahoo Names Autodesk’s Carol Bartz New CEO

Yahoo has hired Carol Bartz, a familiar Silicon Valley face, as its new CEO, ending a two-month quest to find a replacement for founder and ex-CEO Jerry Yang. Yang unseated former CEO Terry Semel in June 2007.

60-year-old Bartz takes over from her post at Autodesk, a software design firm for architects and engineers. She served there as CEO from 1992 to 2006, at which time she adopted the post of Executive Chairman.

Under Bartz, Autodesk’s annual revenue rose from $285 million to $2.2 billion. Its stock price ballooned by an annual average of nearly 20%. She managed to wring these figures out of the balance sheet despite a breast cancer diagnosis made shortly after taking the job. After a mastectomy, she was back at work in four weeks.

Prior to Autodesk, Bartz served at Sun Microsystems for nine years, where she became the No. 2 executive behind then-CEO Scott McNealy. Skeptics point out that despite her obvious merit, Bartz lacks a background in advertising, which at present is crucial to Yahoo’s profit margins, writes MarketingVOX.

Yang’s short reign over Yahoo is marred by his mismanagement of a takeover bid from rival Microsoft. In February, the latter tried buying Yahoo for $31 per share, an offer Yahoo declined more than once over the course of several months — even as its stock plummeted and stockholders filed legal protest.

Many attributed the deal’s failure to Yang’s personal feelings about Microsoft. Since then, a number of Yahoo execs and employees have departed.

With Yang out of the way, speculators suggest Microsoft may renew efforts to buy Yahoo — or at the very least, its search business. (Rumor has it the software giant may already be brokering a deal to do just that.)

But jaded by the events of the past year, investors appeared nonplussed by the Bartz appointment. Tuesday afternoon saw Yahoo shares fall $0.27 to $11.95.