Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer will receive a severance package of $55 million, should she leave, a regulatory filing on Friday disclosed. The payout includes $3 million in cash, $26,324 in health benefits, $15,000 for outplacement, and roughly $52 million in stock and options.
Mayer, who is trying to get Yahoo's growth trajectory back up to speed, made about $36 million in 2015. This number fell nearly 15 percent from $42.1 million the previous year, when she was the highest-paid female CEO in the world. Despite the drop in the salary, Mayer is reported to be earning $13.9 million a year.
Yahoo has been seeing trouble off late; with the tech company announcing the layoff of about 15 percent of its workforce. Starboard Value, a hedge fund company and activist investor, had been pressurising Yahoo into not only selling off its core business, but also replacing its entire board of directors with nominees of Starboard's choosing. The company had been waging a proxy war against Yahoo by soliciting shareholders' support.
Yahoo met Starboard in the middle by creating four additional positions on the board and offering them to Starboard Chief Executive Jeffrey Smith and three of his nominees. This move brings Yahoo's board to a total of 11 directors, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Yahoo holds stakes in the Alibaba Group as well as Yahoo Japan, and this addition to the board of directors is expected to smoothen the sales process and, at the same time, figure out what can be done with Yahoo's stakes in the Alibaba group and Yahoo Japan, the report added.
