Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer will walk away with a $23 million golden parachute

[Shawn Knight]

It was revealed earlier this year that Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer would be stepping down from the company’s board of directors once Verizon completes its acquisition of the Internet pioneer. On Monday, we learned that her severance package will be valued at more than $23 million.

In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Yahoo said Mayer would walk away with roughly $3 million in cash, nearly $20 million in equity and about $25,000 in medical-related benefits if she is fired or leaves for good cause within a year. That’s far less than the estimated $57 million in severance expected to come her way as of last year but a sizable chunk of change nevertheless.

In light of the two massive security breaches the company failed to disclose from 2013 and 2014, Mayer earlier this month said she would forego her annual bonus and equity grant. The executive said it was her desire that the bonuses be redistributed to the company’s employees that contributed to Yahoo’s success in 2016.

Word of the hacks, which came as Verizon was closing on its deal to purchase Yahoo, gave Verizon the ability to negotiate the asking price down to $4.48 billion – a savings of $350 million off the original purchase amount.

The deal is expected to close sometime in the second quarter.

Image courtesy Elijah Nouvelage, Reuters

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https://www.techspot.com/news/68497-yahoo-ceo-marissa-mayer-walk-away-23-million.html

 

[yRaz]

I wish someone would pay me 20 million dollars to fail at my job, how do I get a gig like this?

 

[VitalyT]

Correction: she will run away.

Why was she hired to begin with, and worse kept for all the years?

 

[yRaz]

Correction: she will run away.

Why was she hired to begin with, and worse kept for all the years?

I bet yahoo had a "can't get any worse" mentality

 

[Lionvibez]

I wish someone would pay me 20 million dollars to fail at my job, how do I get a gig like this?

Get good enough to be hired as a CEO then it won't be a problem.

 

[yRaz]

Get good enough to be hired as a CEO then it won't be a problem.

Well I have to make the first company fail before I can go around getting jobs destroying others

 

[wiyosaya]

I wish someone would pay me 20 million dollars to fail at my job, how do I get a gig like this?

Interestingly enough, in the world of big corporations, they will hire and pay CEOs at least that much to come in and close or significantly reduce the size of a company. Take Perez and Kodak, for instance.

The argument appears to be that without such high salaries, they would not be able to attract skilled talent. Personally, I think that those who take such jobs take them out of simple greed and not much else.

 

[andy06shake]

20 million dollar golden parachute???

Crap like this is what's wrong with the world!

Seems like we reward failure and ignore and/or penalize success.

 

[turismozilla]

Are CEOs and other board member and share holders really needed? I think the world would be a better place without them.

 

[VitalyT]

I guess I can picture how the job was pitched to her, or her pitched for the job...

To steer a sinking ship, with the stipulation of a good golden shoot. That's probably how it got started.

 

[Evernessince]

Are CEOs and other board member and share holders really needed? I think the world would be a better place without them.

Well, without share holders you wouldn't be able to raise a massive amount of capital. Companies would not be able to get larger and more expensive ventures would become very difficult. There's nothing wrong with large companies or shareholders or CEOs. The problem is that the government, and thus the people, allow them to abuse the system.

A perfect example of this, the people who voted donald trump in. He who ran a campaign on helping the average person is now trying to remove even more financial regulations that prevent companies from abusing the system. It's funny, we had far better regulation of companies in CEOs before the reagan, bush, and now Trump era.

 

[Darth Shiv]

Are CEOs and other board member and share holders really needed? I think the world would be a better place without them.

Well, without share holders you wouldn't be able to raise a massive amount of capital. Companies would not be able to get larger and more expensive ventures would become very difficult. There's nothing wrong with large companies or shareholders or CEOs. The problem is that the government, and thus the people, allow them to abuse the system.

A perfect example of this, the people who voted donald trump in. He who ran a campaign on helping the average person is now trying to remove even more financial regulations that prevent companies from abusing the system. It's funny, we had far better regulation of companies in CEOs before the reagan, bush, and now Trump era.

They absolutely would be able to get larger. You don't need capital injection from shareholders to grow but conventional wisdom is that most of the time, it is the much faster way to grow. There are many very large IT companies that are privately owned by their founders.

 

[Evernessince]

They absolutely would be able to get larger. You don't need capital injection from shareholders to grow but conventional wisdom is that most of the time, it is the much faster way to grow. There are many very large IT companies that are privately owned by their founders.

You are naming the exception, not the rule.

 

[yRaz]

You are naming the exception, not the rule.

You're confusing big business with small business.

 

[Evernessince]

You're confusing big business with small business.

You're completely off topic and / or lacking delineation.

 

[Jeff Schmidt]

I think the person means CEO's and the BOARD MEMBERS. Not shareholders. Most board members are just there for a paycheck/friends of ceo/golfing buddy/some other rich *******/etc

Shareholders on the other hand are very beneficial for a company.

 

[Reehahs]

I wish someone would pay me 20 million dollars to fail at my job, how do I get a gig like this?

Interestingly enough, in the world of big corporations, they will hire and pay CEOs at least that much to come in and close or significantly reduce the size of a company. Take Perez and Kodak, for instance.

The argument appears to be that without such high salaries, they would not be able to attract skilled talent. Personally, I think that those who take such jobs take them out of simple greed and not much else.

What talent? They might just well have paid Sir Alan Sugar to come in and fire people like he does on Apprentice. For such jobs their should be a hero versus zero mentality. If you fail to meet the goals, you walk away with nothing.

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

I wish someone would pay me 20 million dollars to fail at my job, how do I get a gig like this?

Get good enough to be hired as a CEO then it won't be a problem.

I wish someone would pay me 20 million dollars to fail at my job, how do I get a gig like this?

Get good enough to be hired as a CEO then it won't be a problem.

CEO's of such corporations buy those positions, usually by being stakeholders, they don't just accidentally stumble across them advertised in the employment section in newspapers and apply in the hopes that they'll hit the jackpot. Another way to get that position is to start your own gig and that's how I did it. I held the the titles of owner, CEO, manager, supervisor, labourer and cleaner all at the same time before I could afford to hire some help. My kids now run the show while I'm simply just a shareholder these days, taking it easy and getting paid from the profits they make.

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

If you wondered why she was being so magnanimous by just giving away her bonuses and equities to the many people lives she ruined, it wasn't because she felt sorry for them, It was because she already knew what she was getting out of the deal and could easily afford be so gracious and generous... all the while looking like a humanitarian.

 

[stewi0001]

Get good enough to be hired as a CEO then it won't be a problem.

Well I have to make the first company fail before I can go around getting jobs destroying others

You can always try politics. ;P

 

[bluto 2050]

Given Marissa Mayers performance for the Yahoo shareholders for the entirety of her tenure $1.00 would be more than a generous severance package for her ☺

 

[MilwaukeeMike]

I wish someone would pay me 20 million dollars to fail at my job, how do I get a gig like this?

Actually it's the other way around. She got so much because she succeeded. She got $19 million in equity - that means she is receiving stock. If she had done poorly that stock would have been worth far less. This is done because companies want their CEOs to be paid based on company performance, not just a huge salary regardless of whether they screw up.