In its search for a new chief executive, Yahoo! has received several rebuffs from senior figures in the technology industry, wary of taking on such a mammoth recovery task. But Carol Bartz, the former chief executive of Autodesk, a big design software company, has accepted the post, effective immediately, the company announced last night. Ms Bartz, 60, knows how to develop a software company; when she took over Autodesk in 1992, it was a $250 million company and by the time she had stepped down from the chief executive’s role two years ago, it was a $1.25 billion group. Until this move, she was executive chairman at Autodesk and has served on the boards of several technology companies.

Ms Bartz has also worked at Sun Microsystems, Digital Equipment Corporation and 3M. She is known to the Yahoo! management as she has been a director of Cisco Systems, with Yahoo!’s chief executive and co-founder Jerry Yang. All this makes her one of the most senior women in the industry and she is well regarded in Silicon Valley, with a talent for strategic thinking and cutting deals.

However, Ms Bartz will need all her experience and contacts to turn Yahoo! around. Rich in assets and internet traffic, it needs an injection of energy after the debacle over Microsoft’s $47.5 billion offer.

At the top of her inbox will be the need to establish a strategy for dealing with Microsoft. Decisions have to be made about the merger with AOL, Time Warner’s online division, and action is needed to stem executive departures.

By picking Ms Bartz, Yahoo! has decided to go for a steady hand rather than a risk-taker. But Ms Bartz is a fighter. Only days after she was handpicked to head Autodesk, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was back at work within a month. Arriving at Autodesk with a mandate for change, she described her job as “playing Wendy to the Lost Boys” of Autodesk. This formula might just work for Yahoo!.