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Yahoo! Businesses The Almighty Buck

Yahoo's Marissa Mayer Could Get $23M Exit Payment, Ex-IAC Executive Will Become CEO (hollywoodreporter.com) 102

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

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  • Nice (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Dunbal ( 464142 ) * on Monday March 13, 2017 @12:22PM (#54030335)
    $23 million for hammering the nails in the coffin. Cushy job.
    • Re:Nice (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Fire_Wraith ( 1460385 ) on Monday March 13, 2017 @12:32PM (#54030427)
      Only at the CEO level is failure so richly showered in money.
      • by lgw ( 121541 )

        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.

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

          • Re:Nice (Score:4, Insightful)

            by lgw ( 121541 ) on Monday March 13, 2017 @05:35PM (#54032859) Journal

            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.

            • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

              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 sen

              • I did the numbers, here [google.com].

                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 th

            • 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

              • by lgw ( 121541 )

                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.

          • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by Hognoxious ( 631665 ) on Monday March 13, 2017 @02:13PM (#54031287) Homepage Journal

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

      There's no justice.

    • $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

    • $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.

  • Worth it (Score:5, Informative)

    by kamapuaa ( 555446 ) on Monday March 13, 2017 @12:28PM (#54030395) Homepage

    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.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by junner518 ( 1235322 )
      What? The company lost 95% of value in the last ten years, five of those under Mayer.
      • Re:Worth it (Score:4, Insightful)

        by pseudofrog ( 570061 ) on Monday March 13, 2017 @12:50PM (#54030603)
        You're seriously trying to discredit her based on five years of problems occurring before she took over?
      • Re:Worth it (Score:5, Informative)

        by stephanruby ( 542433 ) on Monday March 13, 2017 @01:04PM (#54030709)

        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).

      • Re:Worth it (Score:5, Informative)

        by Zontar_Thing_From_Ve ( 949321 ) on Monday March 13, 2017 @01:27PM (#54030901)

        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.

        • by dmesg0 ( 1342071 )

          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?

        • 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,
    • by Anonymous Coward

      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.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      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.

    • Re:Worth it (Score:5, Informative)

      by McGruber ( 1417641 ) on Monday March 13, 2017 @12:53PM (#54030613)

      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. .

      • A paragon of the grifteconomy.
      • 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?

      • 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.

      • 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.

        • 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.

          • 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.

            • 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.

              • 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.

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

    • by Anonymous Coward

      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 cha

    • by Anonymous Coward

      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

    • 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.

  • by bogaboga ( 793279 ) on Monday March 13, 2017 @12:48PM (#54030575)

    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!

    • by SirSlud ( 67381 )

      > 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.

      • 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.
        • 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, Yaho

      • 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.

        • by lucm ( 889690 )

          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).

    • by stephanruby ( 542433 ) on Monday March 13, 2017 @01:48PM (#54031019)

      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).

  • by Anonymous Coward

    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.

    • by lucm ( 889690 )

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

      Time to short Verizon stock.

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

  • 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.

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