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.