The thoughtful and cerebral Levchin (pictured here) is best known as a top exec at PayPal. The other directors he nominated previously were Michael Wolf and Harry Wilson. The hedge fund investor, who owns a large chunk of Yahoo, had the right to nominate a mutually agreed-upon fourth director after the company settled the proxy fight with him earlier this year. I had written in September that the board was again looking at Levchin, for a seat designated under an agreement Yahoo had made with Loeb. But Levchin, as well as SurveyMonkey CEO David Goldberg, did not want to be part of a dissident slate against Yahoo co-founder and then-board member Jerry Yang.
As I wrote in February, he had been pegged for a board seat by then-activist shareholder Dan Loeb of Third Point - who is now on the board after winning his fight with Yahoo and ousted former CEO Scott Thompson. In fact, Levchin has been mulling the Yahoo board job for a while, having long been intrigued by the company’s troubles and seeing it as an opportunity rather than a liability. That’s actually be an aim for a while, including a board appointment for longtime entrepreneur Max Levchin, which sources said will occur soon.
Now, according to sources close to the situation, that rejiggering will extend to Yahoo’s board too, with an effort to add more Internet savvy members as directors. It’s part of a series of changes made since new CEO Marissa Mayer arrived this summer from Google, including detailed employee performance reviews, free food, new smartphones and a hunt for innovative mobile properties to scoop up to improve Yahoo’s creaky Silicon Valley reputation. In the last week, Yahoo has redone its powerful Yahoo Mail, refreshed its Flickr photo-sharing service and is also set to release a spanking new homepage design.
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