Levinsohn: Not Part Of Reported MicroHoo Plan

The Times of London this morning is reporting that Microsoft is in talks to acquire Yahoo’s online search business for approximately $20 billion. peHUB normally wouldn’t care too much, except that the report also claims that venture capitalists Jon Miller and Ross Levinsohn “have been lined up to lead the new management team.”

Miller is the former CEO of AOL, while Levinsohn previously ran Fox Interactive Group for News Corp. They currently operate as partners at Velocity Interactive Group, and are regularly mentioned whenever this type of job arises. In fact, they may be the only executives in America who are constantly being talked about to assume positions, rather than to leave them.

But not this time, or at least not yet. Levinsohn denied the report in an email to peHUB, and has been doing to same throughout the blogosphere. This squares with a conversation he and I had earlier this month, after his former Fox Interactive colleague Mickie Rosen opted to join Velocity. I asked him about the constant reports that he and/or Miller would leave the VC world behind, and he said that no such thing would happen in the foreseeable future. Not that it wouldn’t occur eventually, but that the plan right now was to focus on Velocity’s current portfolio companies.

Velocity also is pre-marketing its first fund since Miller and Levinsohn joined late last year — before which is was named ComVentures — and that effort’s success or failure may become a determining factor in future plans. For now, however, it seems like The Times of London egregiously jumped the gun.