The man helping Yahoo’s new CEO plot the company’s rejuvenation has told his staff he is leaving his role as SVP of the Europe, the Middle East and Africa region.
Rich Riley said he is leaving the London- and Geneva-based role after four years this summer to be closer to family, AllThingsD reports.
But his memo says: “I sincerely hope to remain with Yahoo! (NSDQ: YHOO) once the transition is complete and am working with Scott and team to find my next big challenge.” So it’s easy to conclude that Riley may be getting called up to the mothership. He has been helping new CEO Scott Thompson identify new product talent, according to a previous AllThingsD report.
“The reason for communicating this now is that we need to start the search for my successor,” Riley’s memo says.
At an event in London last week, Riley hinted at some possible future Yahoo direction:
“Yahoo has 700 million users each month. Today, we’re virtually exclusively focused on display and search advertising.
“There are a lot of adjacent business models around that, whether it’s virtual goods in gaming, subscripton content. There are also more things that our core customers spend money on that we don’t offer today.
“Scott is suggesting it will be smart for us to offer other things to the portfolio. E-commerce would certainly be one of the big opportunities that’s close to the model we have today.”