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David Kenny stepped down as President of Akamai (AKAM) yesterday at the same time the company reported good numbers that caused the stock to jump 14% after-hours.
As Kenny's on the Yahoo! (YHOO) board, his departure has caused some to wonder if he'll be the next CEO at Yahoo! He won't.
Kenny - in hindsight - should never have been hired at Akamai in the first place. He was hired a little over a year ago in July 2010 and started in September. The position was a new one for Akamai, reported to CEO Paul Sagan. At the time, Akamai was hoping to leverage the data passing through its servers to allow the company to play a larger role in online advertising and analytics.
About 4 months after starting his job, Kenny joined Yahoo!'s board.
I generally don't believe active CEOs -- and definitely not more junior active executives, like Kenny and HP's (HPQ) VJ Joshi who sits on Yahoo!'s board -- should serve on boards. They simply don't have the time.
If I was Paul Sagan, I would have wondered what was going on with Kenny when he chose to go on Yahoo!'s board. From Sagan's perspective, he hires Kenny off the unemployment lines to build a business from scratch. Four months later, this guy is taking a board seat with Yahoo! Is that going to shower prestige on Akamai? No. It looked like a great way to burnish Kenny's own resume though. And then that directorship became such a time-suck over the last 8 months. If I was Sagan, I would have asked Kenny what his primary responsibility was these days: Akamai or Yahoo!
I think the Yahoo! board understands they are on a glide path now to sell Yahoo! I think this happens by end of January. If they don't, there will be hell to pay and Yahoo! shareholders will come after this board full force.
Now is not the time to put Kenny in charge. I believe that Yahoo!'s board knows this.
Even if Yahoo! wasn't in the process of selling itself, Kenny would not be the optimal pick. He's a B- hire for Yahoo! He wouldn't excite shareholders, employees, or potentially new employees. People would continue to flee Yahoo! (as the Yahoo! Employee Satisfaction Survey showed yesterday). Kenny would be better suited to some "emerging" company, where the spotlight wouldn't be on him and he could prove himself on his own merits.
If Yahoo! had to hire a CEO, my first choice would be Marc Andreessen and then Peter Chernin. However, I don't want to see Yahoo! hire anyone.
They have multiple bidders who are salivating. They have patents. They have a deadline, after which shareholders will come after them and remove them if they don't perform.
Land this goddamned plane.
[At the time of writing, Jackson was long YHOO]
