Ex-Akamai President Says Won’t Be Yahoo CEO

Akamai Technologies President David Kenny, who quit last week, said he has no plans to become the next CEO of Yahoo.

Kenny, 49, already a Yahoo director, is the only member of the embattled search-engine and media company's board to have direct experience in media delivery. Chairman Roy Bostock is a retired advertising executive.

I am not and will not be a candidate for the CEO position, Kenny said in a statement to Ad Age. I believe Yahoo is a great company with enormous potential.

Kenny stepped down from Cambridge, Mass.-based Akamai as it reported a rising third-quarter profit saying he wanted to return to my first passion of pursuing emerging opportunities on the consumer Internet.

He didn't provide further details but also resigned as a director of Akamai, which manages servers to speed content delivery for clients like Apple and NBCUniversal.

Paul Sagan, a former journalist, remains Akamai's CEO.

Since Carol Bartz, 63, was fired last month, Yahoo's interim CEO has been CFO Tim Morse, a financial executive who was former CFO of Altera, the specialty semiconductor designer.

Yahoo shares Monday closed at $15.64, bringing the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company's market capitalization to $19.8 billion. Since Bartz was fired Sept. 5, Yahoo shares have gained 21 percent. The shares fell 5.6 percent Monday after co-founder and ex-CEO Jerry Yang said Yahoo may not sell itself but divest holdings in companies like China' Alibaba Group, then pay out a special dividend to shareholders.

Yahoo has hired Goldman Sachs and Allen & Co. for strategic advice but hasn't announced future plans. Takeover speculation has swirled around current technology partners such as Microsoft and China's Alibaba Group, as well as rival Google.

Private equity firms including Silver Lake Partners, Providence Equity Partners and Russia's Digital Sky Technologies have indicated some interest in the company.

Other Yahoo directors with technology experience include Vyomesh Joshi, EVP of Hewlett-Packard's huge Imaging and Printing Group; Brad Smith, CEO of Intuit, the Web-based tax specialist as well as Yang, who served as CEO between 2007 and 2009, preceding Bartz.

Yahoo has hired Heidrick & Struggles, a large executive recruiter, Wall Street sources said. The firm was responsible for luring Bartz away from Autodesk, where she had been a successful CEO, to Yahoo.