June 11 (Bloomberg) -- Yahoo! Inc., owner of the second- ranked U.S. Internet search engine, named former General Electric Co. executive Tim Morse as its chief financial officer.

Morse, who is currently finance chief at chipmaker Altera Corp., will begin work at Yahoo on June 17 and take the CFO role on July 1, the Sunnyvale, California-based company said today in a statement. He succeeds Blake Jorgensen, who plans to join Levi Strauss & Co. as its finance chief on July 1.

Yahoo turned to Morse because of his ability to simplify complex organizations, Chief Executive Officer Carol Bartz said. Yahoo announced Jorgensen’s departure as part of a management shakeup in February, about a month after Bartz took over as CEO. She has closed businesses, such as Yahoo’s travel service FareChase and the storage site Briefcase.

Prior to joining Altera, Morse served as finance chief at General Electric Plastics during his 15-year career at the company. He has a bachelor’s degree in finance from Boston College.

Morse, 40, will receive an annual salary of $500,000, with a target bonus of up to 100 percent of that amount, Yahoo said in a filing.

Stock Options

The company will recommend that he get 400,000 stock options and 150,000 restricted stock units. He also will be awarded a $500,000 hiring bonus to compensate for the loss of benefits from Altera. Jorgensen, who joined Yahoo in 2007, had a salary of $487,500.

Yahoo fell 13 cents to $16.19 today on the Nasdaq Stock Market. The shares have climbed 33 percent this year.

Altera, based in San Jose, California, said a search for Morse’s replacement is under way. James Callas, the corporate controller, will be acting finance chief in the interim.

Yahoo, which trails Google Inc. in U.S. Internet searches, has reported declining profit for three straight years.

Bartz became CEO in January, replacing co-founder Jerry Yang. He rankled investors last year by spurning a Microsoft Corp. buyout offer of as much as $47.5 billion. Yahoo also turned down a separate offer for the search business alone.

Yahoo and Microsoft have held talks about a partnership since Bartz took charge, though she downplayed the idea of a deal this month. Yahoo has a “bright future” without Microsoft, she said at an investor conference.

That suggests Yahoo is trying to fix its problems without forging a deal or selling itself to Microsoft this year, Jeffrey Lindsay, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. in New York, said last week.

To contact the reporter on this story: Ian King in San Francisco at ianking@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: June 11, 2009 17:38 EDT