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Yahoo's Marissa Mayer Could Get $23M Exit Payment, Ex-IAC Executive Will Become CEO (hollywoodreporter.com)

Yahoo has named a replacement for CEO Marissa Mayer once the merger with Verizon becomes official. The next leader of the Sunnyvale-based tech giant will be Thomas J. McInerney, a former chief financial officer of IAC. From a report: Yahoo said Monday that after it completes the sale of its core search business to Verizon and Marissa Mayer and co-founder David Filo step down as board members of Altaba (the new name for the remaining holdings), Mayer could get a $23 million "golden parachute" payment, and Thomas McInerney will run the remaining part of the business as CEO. Mayer's golden parachute, a large payment for top executives if they lose their position as a result of a deal, would include $19.97 million in equity and more than $3 million in cash, according to a regulatory filing. It would kick in if there is a change in control, as will be the case in the deal, and she is terminated "without cause" or "leaves for good reason" within a year.

64 of 102 comments (clear)

  1. Nice by Dunbal · · Score: 3, Insightful

    $23 million for hammering the nails in the coffin. Cushy job.

    --
    Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
    1. Re:Nice by Fire_Wraith · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Only at the CEO level is failure so richly showered in money.

    2. Re:Nice by lgw · · Score: 1

      Only at the CEO level is failure so richly showered in money.

      Most CEOs don't have such golden parachutes. It's the incentive you have to offer someone to become captain of the Titanic after it has already hit the iceberg. If you weren't willing to pay even if the ship sinks anyway, you'd really be limiting your talent pool.

      Of course, paying well is merely a necessary, not sufficient, step in obtaining top talent, as we've seen illustrated here.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    3. Re:Nice by MickyTheIdiot · · Score: 1

      This is more CEO worship tripe. There is NO ONE worth that money when it comes to a CEO. No one at all.

    4. Re: Nice by eneville · · Score: 1

      Yahoo had directory, never "search".

    5. Re:Nice by lgw · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Simple math problem for you: if a company has $10 B in earnings, how much is a CEO worth if he improves that by 1%?

      Another way of looking at it: don't be that guy who says "I don't understand what he does, so it must be easy". If you've ever worked for a bad CEO, you know just how quickly one can destroy any company, no matter how good everyone else is. A CEO who simply "won't ruin a good thing" can be worth a Hell of a lot to a large corporation. A CEO who could actually save a failing corporation? Quite valuable.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    6. Re:Nice by jcr · · Score: 2

      Not any more perhaps, but speaking as an AAPL shareholder, I'd say we got our money's worth when Steve Jobs came back.

      -jcr

      --
      The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
    7. Re: Nice by lucm · · Score: 1

      Yahoo had directory, never "search".

      Not true. They actually had their own search engine between 2003 and 2010. Before they were using Google, after they were using Microsoft.

      Use a search engine and look this up.

      --
      lucm, indeed.
    8. Re:Nice by lucm · · Score: 1

      Simple math problem for you: if a company has $10 B in earnings, how much is a CEO worth if he improves that by 1%?

      Not much, given that 1% falls behind inflation, so the company is actually earning less over time.

      An increase in earnings does not mean that the company has no investments.

      --
      lucm, indeed.
    9. Re:Nice by Gumbercules!! · · Score: 1

      They're only earning less overtime if their outgoings are also 10B. Inflation of 2.3% on outgoings of $400,000 is still less than 1% of 10B....

    10. Re:Nice by rtb61 · · Score: 1

      So how much do those lazy fuckers owe when they cripple income and demolish share value, what a 23 million dollar golden parachute, dude your math, it sucks. So tell me again how much that M&M who was demoted at Google (why the shift in companies) now owes the shareholders of Yahoo, go on, do the numbers, I am certain you know exactly where to look on the internet to calculate those numbers. They also talk about the M&M being able to exercise stock options, well, at least that proves they have a sense of humour (Yahoo stock options, bwah ha ha)

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
    11. Re:Nice by Big+Hairy+Ian · · Score: 1

      $23 million for hammering the nails in the coffin. Cushy job.

      The 3 envelopes she bought her successor aught to be made out of gold

      --

      Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.

    12. Re:Nice by swillden · · Score: 1

      $23 million for hammering the nails in the coffin. Cushy job.

      21% annualized growth in market cap is hardly "hammering the nails in the coffin". Mayer's Yahoo! beat the NASDAQ Composite, S&P 500 and Dow Jones indices. It also beat Apple, Microsoft, IBM and Oracle. It did lose to Amazon and Google, but that's hardly a sign of abject failure.

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    13. Re:Nice by swillden · · Score: 1

      I did the numbers, here.

      Under Mayer's tenure, Yahoo! generated a 21% annual growth rate in market value, beating Apple, Microsoft, IBM and Oracle, as well as the NASDAQ, S&P 500 and Dow Jones. I should point out that those companies also pay dividends, but they're all in the 1-2% range, so the dividend payouts don't change the results.

      demolish share value

      Yahoo! stock was trading at $15.92 when Mayer became CEO, and is at $46.25 today. There have been splits, so those numbers can be compared directly.

      dude your math, it sucks

      Are you sure about that?

      Full disclosure: When I looked up the numbers this morning I expected to see a crash and burn story... but that's decidedly not what happened.

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    14. Re:Nice by strikethree · · Score: 1

      Simple math problem for you: if a company has $10 B in earnings, how much is a CEO worth if he improves that by 1%?

      Not answering your question here but posing another question for you: How much is a CEO worth if the rest of the corporation does not earn the $10 B for that CEO to "improve" upon?

      Another way of doing this: How much is your brain worth if it improves the ability to find food by 1%?

      Should we give all non-life-sustaining energy to the brain? Does muscle mass mean nothing? Does exercise for the heart mean nothing? Only the brain has meaning?

      (I put "improve" in quotes because some of the things that CEOs do to increase that 1% harm the company in the long term.)

      --
      "Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
    15. Re:Nice by lgw · · Score: 1

      We give an astonishing chunk of life-sustaining energy to the brain, while a CEO makes a trivially tiny portion of a company's total payroll.

      Any individual member of the corporation other than the CEO will do far less damage as a fuckup. Companies rarely recover from a fuckup at the top.

      (I put "improve" in quotes because some of the things that CEOs do to increase that 1% harm the company in the long term.)

      Well, it's up to the owners to provide the correct incentive structure. But if they want to destroy the company for a quick turn-around? Sucks, but it's their company to ruin.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
  2. Worth it by kamapuaa · · Score: 5, Informative

    Under her, Yahoo nearly tripled in value, from about $16 billion to $44 billion. She won't win a prize for innovation, but financially she played it smart with Yahoo and made her investors a lot of money, and it makes sense that she would get paid handsomely for the job.

    --
    Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
    1. Re:Worth it by junner518 · · Score: 2, Informative

      What? The company lost 95% of value in the last ten years, five of those under Mayer.

    2. Re:Worth it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Hardly. It was Jerry Yang's early investment in Alibaba that tripled Yahoo's value "under Mayer". If anything, Yahoo's been a under her watch. She fired one of her first big hires after only 15 months of work (he got paid an estimated *$109 MILLION*), made security an afterthought (we all know how great that turned out), and blew millions on holiday parties. If it wasn't for Jerry Yang, Mayer would've been tossed much earlier.

    3. Re:Worth it by pseudofrog · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You're seriously trying to discredit her based on five years of problems occurring before she took over?

    4. Re:Worth it by McGruber · · Score: 4, Informative

      Under her, Yahoo nearly tripled in value, from about $16 billion to $44 billion.

      Wow, I didn't believe that, but I checked YHOO's stock price and kamapuaa is correct. When Mayer became CEO in July 2012, YHOO was trading under $16/share. As I'm posting this, YHOO is trading at $46.5/share. .

    5. Re:Worth it by stephanruby · · Score: 4, Informative

      I think the parent was going for "funny" karma, but that plan backfired and he got an "insightful" instead.

      Both 15% share of Alibaba and 35% of Yahoo Japan are now worth a total of 41 billion dollars, and Marissa Mayer had nothing to do with either of those decisions (which both predate her).

    6. Re:Worth it by rdelsambuco · · Score: 1

      A paragon of the grifteconomy.

      --
      I comment occasionally so that I can mod others -1 overrated or -1 offtopic.
    7. Re:Worth it by oh_my_080980980 · · Score: 1

      That's why the investors were clamoring for her ouster...

    8. Re:Worth it by whoever57 · · Score: 2

      Under her, Yahoo nearly tripled in value, from about $16 billion to $44 billion.

      And none of that increase in value was due to any decision that she made. It was entirely due to the increase in the value of Yahoo's Alibaba holdings.

      How has Yahoo's value changed during here tenure if you deduct the valuation of the Alibaba shares?

      --
      The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
    9. Re:Worth it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      If she's so great why is she being pushed out? :) But let's do some thought experiments...

      Suppose that when she started at Yahoo absolutely all the other Yahoo employees were fired, would Yahoo still be worth $44 billion? Maybe. But, if not, then it's not accurate to attribute Yahoo's current state solely to her. It might be just as "fair" to divide her $23 million among all the Yahoo employees.

      A better thought experiment would be to create a bunch a parallel universes where different people were put in charge of Yahoo. Would the janitor have made worse or better decisions, for example?

    10. Re:Worth it by Zontar_Thing_From_Ve · · Score: 4, Informative

      What? The company lost 95% of value in the last ten years, five of those under Mayer.

      That's absolutely not true and it's easy to prove. You can go to a place like Yahoo Finance (no joke intended - their website is free and easy to navigate) and look up a 10 year run of the stock. On March 13, 2007 Yahoo was worth $29.56 a share at close. It's currently worth about $46.57 a share as I write this on March 13, 2007. That's a gain, not a loss. Maybe something like profits or income went down 95%, as you state, over the values 10 years ago, but that is not reflected in the stock price or the company's market valuation, which is more important (for now) than the money it actually pulls in. Yahoo is valued at almost $45 billion. That's a lot of money. Even if basically she ran the true Yahoo business into the ground and got lucky with Alibaba and the fact that Yahoo Japan is not messed up and has real value, the US stock market has not punished her for this, so to a certain extent you can argue that she did her job.

    11. Re:Worth it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Yahoo Finance has said the following:

      "At the moment, Yahoo is operating as little more than a trading vehicle for Alibaba. The company had planned to spin off its stake in Alibaba, but is not due to uncertainty from the IRS as to whether or not it could be carried out on a tax-free basis.

      It’s difficult to create expectations for Yahoo’s future, as there is still doubt about how it can use its stakes and partnerships to derive revenue. The company’s deal with Verizon is expected to close in early 2017."

      Yahoo's remaining asset is Alibaba stock apparently and there is no core business.

    12. Re:Worth it by wisnoskij · · Score: 1

      You cannot really give Yahoo a reasonable evaluation. Just last year Yahoo's core business was evaluated to be worth around -$8 billion. That is how much the market valued Marissa Mayer. Yahoo, all through MM's stewardship was universally considered a black hole. They owned stocks worth a lot, they own buildings and a name worth money, but the business itself was not only worthless but a strain on the worth of everything around it.

      --
      Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
    13. Re:Worth it by rogoshen1 · · Score: 1

      yes but it would be like selling all of your organs... sure your income for the year would go up.. but how about next year's?

    14. Re:Worth it by stephanruby · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's not genius, but you can't argue with results.

      Yes, you can.

      Results can certainly be the results of other factors. A CEO shouldn't be judged in a bubble devoid of context.

      The existing economy, the success of competitors, prior conditions, prior success of the company, etc. There could be a thousand different reasons not related to the CEO's performance that could affect the results of his/her company under his/her watch.

      And if you want to give Marissa Mayer the benefit of the doubt, give it to her because the company she inherited wasn't doing that well in the first place (except for its Alibaba and Yahoo Japan stock).

    15. Re: Worth it by Luthair · · Score: 1

      It tells you they're splitting into two companies...

    16. Re:Worth it by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Compare it against the S&P 500 index... or the Dow index.. similar rate of return.. basically no better than a value stock..

      Is the average company on one of those indexes a dinosaur from the earliest days of the web which has had to find a way to survive as its original purpose became irrelevant?

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    17. Re:Worth it by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      The outcome is indisputable. The cause? Well who's to say without Mayer it wouldn't be worth $60/share?

      I mean YHOO has appreciated 287%

      In the same time:
      GOOG has appreciated 294% (845 vs 285)
      APPL has appreciated 168% (140 vs 83) while suffering the huge downward trend after the loss of Jobs
      Actually the entire NASDAQ has increased by over 200% in that time.

    18. Re:Worth it by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      That's like saying that because X lives in a huge house (s)he must be incredibly talented and very hard-working.

      Where X = Price Charles, Paris Hilton, that fat Korean fuck...

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    19. Re:Worth it by dmesg0 · · Score: 1

      It's currently worth about $46.57 a share as I write this on March 13, 2007.

      March 13, 2007? I don't think time machines existed back then. Maybe you write this on March 13, 3007?

    20. Re: Worth it by junner518 · · Score: 1

      Appreciate the nuance, perhaps I was a bit terse to get a reaction :) This was addressed by AC below but it is my subjective view that CEOs should be held accountable. It's hard for me to buy the argument that perception (and intrinsic value) of the Yahoo brand is better off after Mayer's reign. Thanks for pointing out the stock value; you are right that that is the best way to estimate the value of a company at a discrete moment in time. That says nothing about the future value; if I were a stock holder, I would SHORT. Market value changes lags real value changes. It's a bit disturbing to me to or so see the rise of CEO types that take on ZERO risk and end up coming out ahead when their companies ultimately fail. It can be framed as more of a gradual cash out process than outright bankruptcy, where shareholders can more easily recover any losses before the inevitable, but the ones delivering the cyanide to any residual value are the ones in control and ultimately do profit. Weird process.

    21. Re:Worth it by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      Under her, Yahoo nearly tripled in value, from about $16 billion to $44 billion.

      Wow, I didn't believe that, but I checked YHOO's stock price and kamapuaa is correct...

      That is entirely about Yahoo's windfall stake in Alibaba and has nothing whatsoever to do with good management by Marissa Mayer, quite the contrary. Factor out Alibaba and the truth emerges: Yahoo went straight down the crapper with Marissa Mayer at the helm.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    22. Re:Worth it by swillden · · Score: 1

      You have to check more than just share price, you have to check for stock splits and such.

      https://www.stocksplithistory.com/yahoo/

      Last split was in 2004.

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    23. Re:Worth it by swillden · · Score: 1

      That is entirely about Yahoo's windfall stake in Alibaba and has nothing whatsoever to do with good management by Marissa Mayer

      Choosing not to sell the Alibaba stake and invest the money in trying to grow Yahoo! was good management.

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    24. Re:Worth it by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      Choosing not to sell the Alibaba stake and invest the money in trying to grow Yahoo! was good management.

      Throw away the money, you mean. I don't call that good management. Neither is Yahoo in the business of stock speculation.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    25. Re:Worth it by swillden · · Score: 1

      Choosing not to sell the Alibaba stake and invest the money in trying to grow Yahoo! was good management.

      Throw away the money, you mean. I don't call that good management. Neither is Yahoo in the business of stock speculation.

      Yahoo! is in the business of generating value for shareholders. Whatever is legal and effective. I do agree that trying to invest the money in growing Yahoo! would have been throwing it away.

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    26. Re:Worth it by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      I do agree that trying to invest the money in growing Yahoo! would have been throwing it away.

      But that is exactly what Marissa Mayer did, and incompetently at that. Not all the money, but many tens or hundreds of millions. Enough to remove all doubt about her talents, or lack of them.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
  3. She didn't or hasn't done well in my opinion by bogaboga · · Score: 2, Informative

    Of course some will label my opinion as "women in technology bashing."

    Ever since she took over, Yahoo has been trending downhill!

    I wish her the very best. So much for people of her ilk!

    1. Re:She didn't or hasn't done well in my opinion by SirSlud · · Score: 1

      > Ever since she took over, Yahoo has been trending downhill!

      It has gone up in stock value from the point she took over to today. If you're going to have an opinion, it could at least be based on events that have occurred in reality.

      --
      "Old man yells at systemd"
    2. Re:She didn't or hasn't done well in my opinion by oh_my_080980980 · · Score: 2

      Which yours obviously are not. In 2015 they were deciding on the future of Mayer, 3 years after being CEO. Yahoo's stock did not perform well and the financials were poor. The company was treading water. Basically people were waiting for a buyer.

    3. Re: She didn't or hasn't done well in my opinion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You are only telling half the story. Tell us why it went up, why did you leave that part out? Was it because Yahoo went up BECAUSE of alibaba stock? Something she had no hand in doing. So yea Yahoo went up, but not because of Marissa. It went up because of alibaba stock doing so well.

    4. Re:She didn't or hasn't done well in my opinion by stephanruby · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Of course some will label my opinion as "women in technology bashing."

      Marissa Mayer is the real anti-feminist. She banned working from home. At the same time, she got a special nursery built for her office at the expense of the company for her own four-months-old. And there was certainly never any talk of building nurseries for the other Yahoo workers that needed them.

      The lesson here is that if you're going to require employees to sacrifice a previous benefit they've had, you better suck it up yourself, use your overinflated personal income to hire a couple of nannies, and at least pretend on the surface that you're sacrificing at the same level that they are.

      Not doing so just created an environment where your own employees just became apathetic worker bees, which would partially explain the 2014 Yahoo data breach (after Mayer instituted that policy change in 2013).

    5. Re: She didn't or hasn't done well in my opinion by lucm · · Score: 1

      So yea Yahoo went up, but not because of Marissa.

      True. It went up *in spite* of that incompetent (which I refuse to call by her first name, we're not talking about Oprah or Linus here).

      --
      lucm, indeed.
    6. Re:She didn't or hasn't done well in my opinion by swillden · · Score: 1

      Which yours obviously are not. In 2015 they were deciding on the future of Mayer, 3 years after being CEO. Yahoo's stock did not perform well and the financials were poor. The company was treading water. Basically people were waiting for a buyer.

      That was my impression as well... until I looked at the numbers. The numbers don't lie, and the most important one is market capitalization, what the market thinks a company is actually worth, net of assets, liabilities and future prospects. Market cap is also good because it's unaffected by stock splits or even by divestments or acquisitions (except to the degree that those are good/bad moves which actually change the market's evaluation of the company's value).

      When Mayer took over on July 17, 2012, Yahoo!'s market cap was $18.63B. Three years later it was $36.19B, a 94% increase. Today it's $44.54B, another 23% increase. YHOO's compound annual growth rate since Mayer has been the CEO is 20.58%. If she could manage my investment portfolio like she managed YHOO, I'd hire her in a heartbeat.

      How does that compare in context, though? I calculated CAGR for a few companies that seemed relevant:

      GOOG: 28.08%
      AAPL: 5.47%
      MSFT: 16.19%
      IBM: -4.86%
      AMZN: 35.74%
      ORCL: 3.91%

      So, Mayer's YHOO was beaten by GOOG and AMZN, but beat AAPL, MSFT, IBM and ORCL. That's really not bad. At all.

      How about against the market as a whole? I calculated CAGR for some important indices over the same time period.

      NASDAQ composite: 16.30%
      S&P 500: 12.76%
      Dow Jones Industrial Average: 11.12%

      Mayer beat them all, soundly. You can try to argue that that's just because of decisions that were made prior to her tenure, but she chose to stay with those bets rather than doing something else. And you can argue that YHOO had the potential to do so much better... but then you have to explain why those companies that underperformed YHOO (on average, all of them) lacked YHOO's potential.

      My perception of YHOO when Mayer took over was that it was a dying company, in search of a reason to exist, desperate to find a way to exploit its remaining loyal customers to achieve some sort of success. And it's pretty clear that it didn't manage to do that... but it most definitely did find a way to increase shareholder value.

      Given the numbers, Mayer did a damned good job for her shareholders and board of directors, and deserves her pay.

      (You can see all of the calculations for the above in this spreadsheet).

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
  4. BS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    BS. Yahoo's value has been deteriorating steadily for the last five years. It's market cap has been positive for the last three years because Alibaba went public in 2014 and that accounts for more than 100% of it's market cap growth since then (in other words, Yahoo's been getting worse). You can't even credit Mayer with the Alibaba investment since it's a board-level decision.

    In 2012, Yahoo was worth about 14bn. Now it's sold for 4bn. THAT is the value of Mayer's stewardship.

  5. Misleading story by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Yahoo is being split. There is an investment entity, which Marissa will not be involved in. And there is a portion which Verizon is acquiring, Marissa will be joining Verizon. The Yahoo brand is going to Verizon, along with Marissa. Someone has to step into the empty CEO spot of the investment entity.

    1. Re:Misleading story by lucm · · Score: 1

      The Yahoo brand is going to Verizon, along with Marissa.

      Time to short Verizon stock.

      --
      lucm, indeed.
  6. I'm a white male so I don't tick any boxes by Hognoxious · · Score: 3, Funny

    I've driven half a dozen companies into the dirt and I didn't get that much in total.

    There's no justice.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  7. Work hard enough... by netsavior · · Score: 1

    It just goes to show you, if you work hard and help to ruin a massively powerful brand, you too can get paid millions to leave.

  8. awww by lactose99 · · Score: 1

    Hoping her new job doesn't build her a daycare and refuses to let her work from home. See how she likes it

    --
    Fully licensed blockchain psychiatrist
  9. Yahoo and Verizon, sitting in a tree by wjcofkc · · Score: 1

    I still say this will go down as one of the most disastrous business deals in history. Yahoo is done. Verizon is buying a rotting corpse and they will regret it.

    --
    Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
    1. Re:Yahoo and Verizon, sitting in a tree by cheesybagel · · Score: 1

      It's basically AOL buys Netscape redux. It's the 2000s again.

  10. Re:She skews the statistics by Grishnakh · · Score: 1

    It's not just her that's made women executives look bad; just look at Carly Fiorina.

  11. Re:She skews the statistics by OhPlz · · Score: 1

    Ellen Pao also comes to mind.

  12. iMiracle by lucm · · Score: 1

    we got our money's worth when Steve Jobs came back.

    Steve Jobs is back??? OMG how did this happen

    --
    lucm, indeed.
    1. Re:iMiracle by someoneOtherThanMe · · Score: 1

      And it's not even Easter yet.

  13. Re:She skews the statistics by lucm · · Score: 1

    Ellen Pao

    Trigger warning next time, please

    --
    lucm, indeed.
  14. Re: time machines by hackwrench · · Score: 1

    What do we want? A time machine! When do we want it? Well, anytime really...