Yahoo CEO defends his leadership, need to invest

CARLSBAD, California (Reuters) - Yahoo Inc (YHOO.O) Chief Executive Jerry Yang said on Wednesday he considers himself the right person to lead Yahoo into a new era of growth, but reiterated investments would take time to pay off.

"I do think I am the best person to lead Yahoo," Yang told attendees at the D: All Things Digital conference of high-tech industry leaders taking place near San Diego.

He responded to a question by conference organizers about whether he had the experience to lead after takeover talks with Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) broke down earlier this month. Yang stressed: "We did not walk away from that proposal. Microsoft did."

On May 3, Microsoft said it was abandoning its bid to acquire Yahoo for $47.5 billion, or $33 per share after Yahoo rebuffed its offer, saying it would only settle for $37 a share. In the middle of May, the two companies said they were again holding talks on a potential transaction that would stop short of an outright merger.

On Wednesday, Yang reiterated what the company has been saying over the past year -- that it "has a lot of work to do" and needs to make investments to reach management's vision of a new Yahoo. Its new strategy is to tap the underlying social connections of its roughly 500 million monthly visitors to become a "must buy" for advertisers.

(Reporting by Eric Auchard; editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)