Worth it: Marissa Mayer gets $70 mn package to lead Yahoo

New Yahoo Chief Executive Marissa Mayer’s compensation package could total more than $70 million in salary, bonuses, restricted stock and stock options over five years, according to a regulatory filing made by the company Thursday. Mayer’s pay package is broken out into $1 million in annual salary, as much as $2 million in an annual bonus, and $42 million in stock options and other awards, as well as $14 million in “make whole restricted options” for forfeiture of compensation from Google. As the first female Google engineer and one of its earliest employees, Mayer’s net worth is already estimated to be as much as $300 million. Yahoo’s hiring of Mayer as CEO from Google earlier this week caught analysts, investors and even some employees by surprise. Mayer, 37, edged out presumed front-runner and acting CEO Ross Levinsohn to become Yahoo’s third CEO in a year. [caption id=“attachment_384166” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Mayer’s compensation package could be $70 million in five years: Reuters[/caption]Industry observers believe Mayer’s selection over Levinsohn is a signal that Yahoo is likely to renew its focus on Web technology and products rather than beefing up online content. Her appointment caps a tumultuous year at Yahoo. In May, Scott Thompson resigned as CEO after less than 6 months on the job as a controversy flared up over his academic credentials. Thompson replaced the controversial Carol Bartz, fired in September after failing to revitalize Yahoo. Thompson’s total compensation at hire was valued at $27 million. He got no severance but was able to keep the $7 million in compensation he got for leaving Paypal. Bartz got more than $10 million in severance when she was fired last year. A self-described “geek” with a master’s degree in computer science from Stanford, Mayer has frequently championed bringing more women into tech. Mayer reported for her first day of work as CEO on Tuesday, the same day Yahoo announced weak financial results, with flat net revenue and a slight decline in profit during the second quarter. Though she was on the company’s sprawling Sunnyvale, Calif, campus, she did not participate in its earnings call. For his part, Levinsohn was also absent from the call, which was led by Yahoo’s Chief Financial Officer Tim Morse. Mayer joins Yahoo as something of a celebrity, having already established herself as one of Silicon Valley’s leading women, both inside and outside of the office. She is known for her love of fashion and regularly appears on the society pages for hosting parties – from intimate literary salons in her Four Seasons penthouse in San Francisco to Christmas bashes at her home in Silicon Valley near the Googleplex. In 2009 she married real estate investor Zachary Bogue–Mayer tweeted that the couple is expected their first child, a boy, in October. In 2010, the couple hosted a $30,000-a-plate fundraiser dinner for President Obama at Mayer’s Palo Alto home. And late last year, Mayer became an Internet meme after she was filmed dancing to an MC Hammer beat in a YouTube video made to support San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee’s election effort. Despite the upheaval, Yahoo remains one of the world’s most popular websites, with more than 700 million monthly visitors, according to the company. But the company has seen its revenue growth stall, amid an industrywide decline in online display advertising prices and competition from Facebook Inc and Google. Visitors to Yahoo-branded websites increased 2 percent year-on-year during the second quarter, Yahoo said. But queries on Yahoo’s U.S. core search websites declined 17 percent during the second quarter, the number of minutes visitors spent on its media properties fell 10 percent. Reuters