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Yahoo's Marissa Mayer In Line For $55M Severance If Fired Within A Year Of Sale (nytimes.com)
whoever57 writes: A Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing on Friday revealed that Yahoo's board has agreed to a $55 million severance package for Marissa Mayer if she loses her job within a year of a sale. That's a lot of money for a chief executive who hasn't been able to keep Yahoo's stock from falling. In 2015, the value of Yahoo's stock fell by 33%. Worth noting: most of the money from the severance package is composed of restricted stock units and options -- there's only $3 million in cold hard cash. Also, Yahoo revealed Mayer received a significant pay cut last year. Her "reported pay" was $36 million, but her "realized pay" is closer to $14 million.
She shouldn't get jack shit! Tossed out on her ass. She upended many people's lives by discontinuing the work from home option. She only cares about Marissa Mayer.
And therein lies the problem. Yahoo! isn't relevant any longer. I don't even know the last time I even thought of it.
Shh.
That's a lot of money, full stop. Nothing else needed to be said after that. Where can I get a job like that? I mean since the price of labor is going down and all... This is PROOF that ability and hard work has exactly jack shit to do with compensation or the Majick Fairytale Free Market.
C|N>K
Nobody has been able to do anything with yahoo. It is the company about nothing. It just kind of shuffles along not really living and not yet dead. It does provide a nice example of the worst possible way to define a front page to a website. I try to stop by about once a month just to see how much worse my own sites could be so I do not feel so bad.
She will still leave and have enough money to sit around and do nothing for the rest of her life. I'm not bitter about these CEOs, but this is a pattern that needs to be broken. If you underperform, you're gone--just like an underling would be gone. Walked to the door by security with your box of personal things.
Does she have to train her replacement?
If she does get fired in the next year, she can always run against Democratic Senator Diane Feinstein in the 2018 election. Maybe she will be less annoying and more successful than the last CEO who ran in California.
What's that in MALE failed CEO dollars? 71 mil?
I wouldn't be so cavalier. Yahoo do add value in a lot of ways. The paradigm shift to apps and mobile in no way diminishes the fact that there are a lot of very cool things at Yahoo. Popular? Maybe not so much. Useful? You betcha.
I well remember Google trying their hand at a "portal" with iGoogle. Flopped. Why? They could not compete with Yahoo. Yahoo still holds the attention of a significant number of the Web's first users, myself included. I'm in IT, but aside from good nostalgia, Yahoo is still a cool place to peruse and use. The new hotness is not always the best way.
That would be adequate for all the damage she did. But CEOs these days cannot fail anymore, no matter how stupid and destructive. They just get a few ten millions less in compensation, but still get indecently rich.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The only yahoo function I have used is the Groups, and it was horrible to begin with, and they kept making it worse.
This is one of those things that in one hundred years time people will look at with a similar kind of horror that most of us feel about the matter-of-fact slavery state of affairs in 19th century America. The system is ridiculous - those who decide the CEO's compensation package are, by and large, the members of the board. And who are the members of the board? By and large, CEOs of other companies. Shareholders have something to say, of course, but unless you own a sizeable chunk of a company, you might just as well ignore the whole thing. At any rate, if your chunk is big enough, you will have a seat on the board.
Behold the robber barons of the 21st century.
Please consider me for the head of Yahoo, I can run the company into the ground twice as fast as your current head but I'll do it for half the pay.
But CEOs these days cannot fail anymore, no matter how stupid and destructive.
I got laid off along with 2,000+ employees from a Fortune 500 company several years ago. As for the CEO, he got 60% raise for having a lousy fiscal year. Rumor had it that he needed a new yacht to keep up with his peers, which is why these golden parachutes keep going up in value over the years.
ONLY 3 million in cash...
*vomit*
flickr. It's all they have left that's worth anything.
Not that they're giving it the attention it needs.
A TV pundit recently observed that each CEO of Yahoo has walked away with significant compensation after a short term, yet the stockholders have gotten nada in the form of dividends. And they may not get much when it's eventually sold off, or will get nothing if it goes bankrupt (which is less likely.)
Ironically, I rely on Yahoo's "Finance" section for much of my own stock-picking: its "Key Statistics" page is by far my favorite one-page stock statistic summary. Here are some highlights (read: lowlights) for YHOO itself:
Profit Margin (ttm): -87.74%
Return on Assets (ttm): -0.16%
Return on Equity (ttm): -12.82%
Trailing Annual Dividend Yield3: N/A
This paints a picture of a company that is losing money (negative profit margin), hasn't managed its assets well (negative return on assets and return on equity), and doesn't treat stockholders well (see ROA and ROE, together with no dividend.) Next, throw in a history of expensive golden parachutes to short-term CEOs and you've got a stock that no one (IMHO) should ever own.
Sadly, those of us who have part of our money in S&P 500 funds have a few bucks that get to go along on this horrifying ride.
For taking a old & tired (in internet years) company and
helping drive it into the ground. And insignificance.
And being a woman helps 'cause you can do no wrong.
Hate on Marissa Mayer all you want, but Yahoo was a sinking ship long before she took the helm. Yahoo's search is surprisingly bad (please try it if you don't believe me) and Yahoo Games sold out long ago. They have talented scientists, but like Microsoft and HP, the management culture is very successful at muting talent.
Has anyone done a careful study to determine if high CEO compensation results in better company performance? The issue of correlation will have to account for the desire of greedy candidates for a CEO job to get on board with a company that is or will generate a lot of cash and profit so as to make a multi-million dollar pay package look justified.
Anecdote: Many years ago*, I read a story about a small California oil company that had been driven into bankruptcy. The CEO had walked (or been canned) and a bankruptcy court judge assigned. As is customary, the judge appointed an interim manager to oversee the company through what was probably going to be a dissolution. But the company was such a basket case (and the potential pay so low), the only person he could find was a friend of his who was a janitor. The janitor proceeded to go through company records, find underperforming assets to sell, reorganize the core organization and bring the company out of the bankruptcy process as a profitable business. All for what was no more than a few times his janitor's salary.
*This predates the birth of the Internet by some years, so I'm having trouble searching for a story on-line. IIRC, it was written up in the WSJ.
Have gnu, will travel.
We have as female CEO of a California tech company. Fired on performance. Sounds like possible VP pick.
See. You. Next. Tuesday.
Government manipulates money, interest rates, taxes income and wealth, redistributes, runs huge deficits and debts, borrows and prints for various military excursions that enrich a number of very well connected companies and individuals, bails out entire markets time after time after time.
What has that to do with Mayer?
Here's how she got hired: Stanford degree (A must in Silly Valley these days), Google on her resume and this.
Please read up on the role of the "Halo Effect"
It with with men too. Taller is always better.
Don't forget that someone representing the company (presumably the board of directors) hired her and entered into a contract that explicitly spelled out the severance in the event of early termination. The company agreed to this in advance. Go ahead and complain about the actions she took or didn't take. Go ahead and complain that she didn't save the company (if even that were possible). If you are going to complain about the severance, don't complain about the CEO, complain about the company that entered into a contract providing a huge severance package without the requirements of performance.
Leave it to New York Times to count other people's money...
If yours does not require much counting, at least, rejoice about ours — I recon, she'd pay at least $20 mln of that in taxes...
Oh, and the one important bit from TFA, that the write-up skipped:
So, maybe, the taxes will be less. But it may not be $55 mln either, if the stocks/options flop by the time restrictions expire...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Make her earn her pay cleaning toilets. Eliminate her personal daycare and require her to report 7am every day.
She'll quit the next day.
Q.E.D.
Marissa Mayer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Elizabeth Holmes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I took GPs comment about a magic free market as I will explain.
There is not a "free market" by any stretch of the imagination. We have Fascism, not "Free Market". Businesses spend billions of dollars putting in politicians that pass laws benefiting them. "Regulator" positions and top level executives are a revolving door, ensuring that businesses control regulation in addition to politics. Corruption is rampant, and average people are shat upon.
Mayer's Golden Parachute for running a company downhill, and Yahoo's requirement to pay her more money than most families can make in a lifetime just to go away, is an example of corruption and a system which is morally bankrupt.
Before you say it, Socialism is inherently fascist and won't fix the problems. Capitalism can correct fascism, after numerous heads get lopped off.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Cunt was all like treason hurr durr
It's not Marissa's fault. She negotiated well for herself. What the board agrees to pay her is on them.
As we finish the 4th season of Vikings, failed King Ragnar Lothbruek returns to his homeland and his sons after a long journey and asks his sons and his subjects to take his life to replace him.
You've obviously made up your minds about me. I cannot blame you for that.
I dare you. Put me out of my misery. Do it. Do it. Do it, do it. DOOOO IT!
[etc.]
Who wants to be King!?!
Is anyone else a little annoyed by the Marissa Mayer in 90 second linked video. They seem to give her way more credit for innovation at google like maps. That's something they bought and while she headed the map team for a while there is sparse evidence that she is responsible for that innovation or really any other innovation.
Look she was lucky, she was employee number 20 at a very profitable company, who was a nice piece of ass, who banged one of the founders for a while. But after a while it was clear she wasn't that great a performer and her career stalled.
But because she was pretty, came from google and vocal, she became a media darling and yahoo which is run by idiots desperate hired her for a ton of money.
We are bored of hearing about her.
That sucks. My condolences.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
If I were, I might be offended by this.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I don't think that Mayer has done a very good job with Yahoo, but that said, Yahoo was probably screwed long before she got there.
What is admirable, is that she has managed to make (at least) 10's of millions a year, and have three kids at Yahoo, with their nanny and daycare room right next to her office, while looking good doing it.
Make fun of her all you want, but I bet she had a higher salary with better parental benefits and a severance packages than any of us have gotten.
Anyone looking at the Yahoo CEO position knows that sooner or later the major shareholders are going to demand something irrational or impossible. The only way they'd take to job if the were guaranteed to get paid for honestly trying to run the company up to the point that they were asked to produce a unicorn.
I like yahoo mail tons better than Gmail. (I hqave a hard time making sense of google's threaded emails).
I also have not found an RSS newsreader I like better than my.yahoo. I've been using it since 1997.
To be entirely fair to her, I don't think I'd be able to run a company nearly as badly as she has. I mean, sure, I'd be an incompetent CEO of anything, but I'm sure I'd accidentally make some good decisions along the way. Yahoo is frequently valued below the actual amount of cash that they have on hand. To get a company to that point requires a lifetime of experience with bad decision making and leadership. That commands a high premium!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
"Also, Yahoo revealed Mayer received a significant pay cut last year. Her "reported pay" was $36 million, but her "realized pay" is closer to $14 million."
Look at me, I suck at my job. Pay me a shitload of money, because.
Disgusting bullshit.
/. Dissent will not be tolerated. Think like us or perish.
For all the people talking about how she's tanked the stock...She came in while the stock was at 15 and a half, and today the stock is at 36 and a half. OK, big surprise, she wasn't able to turn the company into the next Google. But the market cap has climbed from $14 Billion to $34 Billion under watch. I don't think you can call her an abject failure. An abject failure would be losing her shareholders value. Like maybe she sold Yahoo's investments that are the core of its modern business, in order to fund one of her relatively minor pet projects that didn't work out.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
She was hired to be the CEO. And CEOs severance packages, in big companies, are usually within that range. This is the job to have in the industry, where incompetence is not seen as a failure, but rather a "failed try". Not so many jobs carry that amount of "tolerance", but yet there are some: football/base ball/tennis/.... player who doesn't perform as expected (and yet is (pre) paid a lot), an expensive actor/actress who plays badly, ...
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
It strikes me that this would not be news if the subject weren't a woman. This is pretty standard corporate practice. Just looking at yet another way to dump on the highest profile woman business leader?
Mostly, they just call the cops.
Factor out the value of the Alibaba stake, which she had nothing to do with, and you get a much clearer picture of Marissa's Mayer's management talent. Honestly, her talents lend themselves better to some other room than the boardroom.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Feel the Bern.
Feel the Bern.