Sunnyvale: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer
will walk away with a $55 million severance package if the company’s auction of
its internet operations culminates in a sale that ousts her from her job.
The payout disclosed in a regulatory
filing Friday consists of cash, stock awards and other benefits that Mayer
would get should she be forced out as CEO within a year after a sale. Although
Yahoo’s board is still evaluating takeover offers, most investors are betting
that the company will decide to sell its well-known brand and an internet
business that includes a popular email service and sections focused on sports
and finance.
Mayer has been unsuccessfully trying
to turn around Yahoo for nearly four years. Instead, Yahoo’s long-running slump
has deepened during her reign, making her pay a prickly topic among investors.
Yahoo declined to comment beyond its
filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The documents didn’t
explain the rationale for the severance packages covering Mayer and other Yahoo
executives, although they are common at most publicly held companies as a way
to maintain some stability during times of uncertainty.
Mayer received a compensation
package valued at nearly $36 million last year under the SEC’s accounting
rules. Yahoo’s board maintained in its filing that it was only worth about $14
million as of April 1.
Mayer’s inability to boost Yahoo’s
advertising sales at a time that marketers are shifting more of their budgets
to digital services is the main reason investors are pushing the company to
cash out and turn its Internet operations to a new owner.
Last year, for instance, Yahoo’s
board set a target asking management to generate $4.6 billion in revenue, after
subtracting ad commissions. That would have been a modest 5 percent increase
from the previous year. Yahoo’s revenue last year instead came in at $4.1
billion.
The company this year expects its
revenue after ad commissions to decline another 15 percent to a projected $3.5
billion.
No comments:
Post a Comment