Yahoo has hired a new head of mergers and acquisitions–former General Electric M&A exec Andrew Siegel, who will now be VP of corporate development.

Yahoo CFO Tim Morse dropped the news with no details about that title in an interview with The Wall Street Journal about the Silicon Valley Internet giant’s third-quarter earnings.

One question apparently not answered was what exactly is the status of its current top M&A exec, Greg Mrva–who has had the title Siegel now has posted on his LinkedIn profile–as well as that of VP of mergers and acquisitions more recently.

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According to numerous sources, Yahoo has been shopping around Zimbra, the open-source email company it bought in late 2007 for $350 million.

Zimbra is only one of the many assets of Yahoo that are now on the block, including its personals business, its HotJobs online classified unit and more to come.

The effort to unload Zimbra is yet another sign that the company is trying to slim down its diverse portfolio, even as it strives to redefine itself this week with a new, pricey marketing campaign that seeks to position Yahoo primarily as a consumer company.

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You could see this one coming a mile out: After telling users they could not upload new videos late last year, Yahoo is finally shutting down Jumpcut.

“This was a difficult decision to make, but it’s part of the ongoing prioritization efforts at Yahoo!,” said Jumpcut in a note to users today.

That’s code for the stylings of new CEO Carol Bartz, who is hard at work axing many of Yahoo’s similarly lagging services.

The sassy video-editing service was bought by Yahoo in 2006 amid high hopes of the Internet giant becoming a big player in the hot online video market.

That honor, as it turned out, went to YouTube, which was more cats-on-skateboards-oriented than tools-oriented.

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After the news broke that former Microsoft exec Joanne Bradford was headed to Yahoo as the head of its U.S. ad sales and more, I got to talk to both her and her new boss, Hilary Schneider, on the phone this morning about the move.

Bradford left her job as national ad sales chief at Spot Runner, where she arrived just six months ago, to take the position of SVP of U.S. revenue and market development at Yahoo.

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In what is both a surprising and not-so-surprising move, Yahoo has replaced its top U.S. ad sales exec with one from Microsoft.

The departure of Dave Karnstedt, who took over last year when longtime Yahoo ad sales exec Wenda Millard left Yahoo in the first of many controversial partings, has been long rumored internally.

Karnstedt will join Redpoint Ventures and is being replaced by Joanne Bradford, a longtime and well-known Microsoft exec who decamped from the software giant to helm national ad sales at the trendy start-up Spot Runner just six months ago.

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