Sue Decker's rising profile

Sometimes business magazines should just spit out what they really mean. Forbes profiles Sue Decker, Yahoo's CFO, notes her credibility with institutional investors, her new operational responsibilities, but holds back from the obvious conclusion: if Terry Semel's eased out of the CEO slot, Decker, who may have once been a model, is now the leading internal candidate for the position. For a translation of the Forbes piece:

Chief Executive Officer Terry Semel, who started almost a year after Decker, has born the brunt of criticism.

Semel's never been particularly charismatic, or articulate. Even at the height of his reputation, in testament to his effortless success and good fortune, the cynics dubbed him Forrest Gump, When the stock price was high, that was a joke; now it's serious.

but Chief Operating Officer Dan Rosensweig, who controls product development, marketing, all business units and ad sales, could also be singled out, resulting in Decker picking up some work.

Rosensweig's a fearsome taskmaster, but doesn't inspire much devotion in his reports. The exec, formerly with ZDNet, had his eyes on the top job, but has more recently shifted his ambitions to Democratic politics.

Top management claim to have a plan for turning the rest of the company around as well but have been similarly short on specifics. The coming months will test the team's ability to keep its word. If it does, count on Decker's contribution to push her star even higher.

Oh, please.

Enough tea-leaf reading. What I really want to know is this: was Sue Decker, before her stint as a Wall Street analyst, really a model? And does anyone have pictures? If you do, you know what to do.

Sue Decker's rising star [Forbes]

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