Marissa Mayer could get as much as $158 million in severance when she is let go at Yahoo if the board of directors decides to sell its core Internet business.
Yahoo's board is being pressured by activist investor Starboard Value LP to dump its plans to spin off its stake in Asian e-commerce juggernaut Alibaba Group Holdings and sell its Internet business to the highest bidder, reported
Reuters.
Reuters said Yahoo has a 15 percent stake in Alibaba and the board held a three-day meeting last week where the future of the stake was discussed. The discussion of what Yahoo's board will eventually do sparked interest in Mayer's lucrative severance, said
Infotech Lead.
"Mayer is one of the country's best-paid CEOs," said the newsletter. "The severance payment is almost four times of the total payment she received in 2014. Last year, Mayer received total payment of $42 million against $24.9 million in 2013."
USA Today said Mayer's severance package would activate if she is terminated without cause because of a change of control of the company. The package was valued at $157.9 million in 2014, the newspaper said.
That includes a cash severance of $3 million, $24,331 in continued health-care benefits, $15,000 for outplacement benefits, restricted stock acceleration worth $66.5 million and option acceleration totaling $88.3 million.
"To be sure, these numbers are a bit misleading because Yahoo's stock price — while much higher than when Mayer took over — has fallen 32 percent since they were calculated at the end of 2014," said Dan Primack of Fortune magazine.
"That would bring the change-of-control severance down to approximately $108 million, and the regular severance down to around $25.5 million. But those are still ridiculously high numbers, and make me wonder how some of Yahoo's directors could think about firing Mayer without following her out the door."
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