SAN FRANCISCO -- Susan Decker knows how to make a statement.
A few years ago, she rode into a Yahoo company meeting on a motorcycle. Her message: I'm not your typical chief financial officer.
Decker will need more than stunts in her new role as president of the Internet search company. The one-time stock analyst, an expert at scrutinizing firms from the outside, will now have to evaluate her employer of seven years from the inside and provide the leadership to reinvigorate a famous but troubled brand.
Decker will run Yahoo Inc. with company co-founder Jerry Yang, who took over Monday as chief executive from Terry S. Semel. The immediate speculation was that Yang was taking the chief executive post on a temporary basis to give Decker a little time to prove to the board and investors that she is indeed much more than typical.
The management shake-up, announced after the stock market closed, boosted Yahoo shares nearly 5 percent in after-hours trading. But Douglas Christopher, an analyst at Crowell, Weedon & Co., said the rise was "an expression of relief" that Semel was departing and not necessarily a vote of confidence in Yang or Decker.
"She's a good financial person, but whether she's a strategic leader, I don't know," said Christopher, who owns Yahoo stock.
Decker, 44, majored in computer science and economics at Tufts University, and then got an MBA at Harvard Business School. She was a star on Wall Street, specializing in media, advertising and publishing stocks - including Yahoo - at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette. James Cramer, a former hedge fund manager and now host of a CNBC investing show, called her "the single-best advertising analyst I have ever seen."
Like many analysts, Decker heard the siren call of the dot-coms in the late 1990s. She joined Yahoo as chief financial officer in June 2000, just after the market began to crumble - and Yahoo started to stumble.
Former Yahoo executive Rob Solomon said Decker didn't fit the stereotype of CFOs, who tend to see everything from the point of view of the numbers.
"We would go in and say `Hey, let's acquire this company,'" said Solomon. "She would start by tearing it apart from a 10-year discounted cash-flow perspective. But then she would go into the strategic issues. How would they would fit into our operations? How does this fit into our story?"
