Marissa Mayer’s Yahoo Salary: $1 Million Base, Up To $60 Million In Stock And Bonuses

Yahoo today filed regulatory documents with the SEC disclosing how much it will pay its newly appointed CEO Marissa Mayer. There are some big numbers here, but overall it seems to be in line with the industry standards.

Yahoo has submitted its entire offer letter dated July 16th, 2012 in the SEC filing, but here are the relevant bits minus the legalese:

• Mayer’s starting annual base salary will be $1 million annually, which balances out to $83,333.33 per month. This is the exactly the same amount that former CEO Scott Thompson was offered in base salary (he only collected about a third of that before he was ousted.) Like the rest of us working stiffs, she’ll have two paydays a month — the 10th and the 25th.

• She will be eligible to participate in an incentive plan that will pay her 200 percent of her annual base salary with a 2012 maximum of 400 percent of her salary if she exceeds her targets — so, that could bring in between $2 million to $4 million more per year.

• She’ll also get some nice stock compensation, if it’s approved by the compensation committee. As an “annual equity award” she’ll receive $12 million in company stock, split between restricted stock units and stock options. She’ll also get a “make whole restricted stock unit” grant of $14 million, and something called a “one-time retention equity award” of $30 million.

 
Mayer’s compensation spread is pretty par for the course for tech executives, who often keep their base salaries relatively low while raking in big bucks in stock compensation and performance-based bonuses. For comparison, Mark Zuckerberg pulls in a base salary of $500,000 as CEO of Facebook, which he’s requested to reduce to $1 per year starting in 2013. Steve Jobs famously had a $1 annual salary at Apple, as does Google CEO Larry Page, HP CEO Meg Whitman, and others.

But you know what they say: Salary ain’t nothing but a number (alright, no one really says that, but they should.) The truly interesting thing to see will be how Mayer leads Yahoo in the days and weeks ahead — and if she can really turn the company around.

What will also be interesting to see is TechCrunch founder Mike Arrington’s on-stage interview with Mayer onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco in just a few weeks (they’ve had a Disrupt tête-à-tête before, and it did not disappoint.) You can snap up tickets here.

Crunchbase

• MARISSA MAYER
• YAHOO!

Person: Marissa Mayer

Companies: Yahoo!, Google

Marissa Mayer is CEO of Yahoo. Previously as a VP at Google, Marissa Mayer led the product management and engineering efforts of Google’s local, mobile, and contextual discovery products including Google Maps, Google Maps for Mobile, Local Search, Google Earth, Street View, Latitude and more. At 36 years old, she was also the youngest member of Google’s executive operating committee. During her 12 years at Google, Marissa led product management and design efforts for Google web search, images, news,...

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Company: Yahoo!

Website: yahoo.com

Launch Date: January 1, 1994

IPO: December 4, 1996, Nasdaq:YHOO

Yahoo was founded in 1994 by Stanford Ph.D. students David Filo and Jerry Yang. It has since evolved into a major internet brand with search, content verticals, and other web services. Yahoo! Inc. (Yahoo!), incorporated in 1995, is a global Internet brand. To users, the Company provides owned and operated online properties and services (Yahoo! Properties, Offerings, or Owned and Operated sites). Yahoo! also extends its marketing platform and access to Internet users beyond Yahoo! Properties through its distribution network...

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