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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.
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
Does she have to train her replacement?
What's that in MALE failed CEO dollars? 71 mil?
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.
Maybe golden parachutes should be based on performance (long-term, over the course of employment).
They shouldn't automatically get millions just for taking on a risky job.
This happens because directors who sit on many boards want to make sure that when they get the boot, the huge payout will be easier to justify - "Just look at what they got for tanking the company." It has zero to do with performance, or they would have just fired her. It's not like they had to agree to this deal
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
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.
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.
This. The guys sitting on the non-exec boards or renumeration boards are mostly from the same pool of people who are directors themselves in other companies. One hand washes the other... They're basically stealing from the shareholders, who mostly don't mind because the large institutional investors like pension funds are run by the same guys.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
The Yahoo Board that rejected Microsoft's $43 billion takeover offer are the parties who committed breach of fiduciary duty. Everything that came after that has been a desperate attempt to stack sandbags in front of a tsunami.
sPh
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.
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.
Used to be only failed male CEOs could run for governor or president.