Yahoo dangled a US$27 million pay package to lure new Yahoo chief executive Scott Thompson away from PayPal.Yahoo offered Thompson a deal that includes a US$1 million salary and a bonus of up to US$2 million this year. Yahoo is guaranteeing to pay him US$1 million of the bonus; the remaining US$1 million will hinge on Yahoo’s financial results.
Thompson will also receive stock incentives valued at US$22.5 million. The stock awards could be worth more or less, depending how Yahoo’s long-slumping shares fare under Thompson’s leadership.
To top it off, Yahoo is paying Thompson US$1.5 million to offset money he forfeited by leaving PayPal. A US$6.5 million chunk of the stock awards are also meant to offset some of the compensation Thompson would have gotten at PayPal, according to the filing.
Thompson received a US$10.4 million compensation package at PayPal in 2010. It included a US$645,000 salary. EBay has not yet revealed how much it paid Thompson last year.
Unless more money and stock is added later in the year, Yahoo will not be paying Thompson as much as former Yahoo chief executive Carol Bartz, who was hired three years ago and fired four months ago. Yahoo chief financial officer Tim Morse has been running Yahoo since Bartz’s ouster.
Bartz’s compensation package during her first year on the job was valued at US$47.2 million. Much of that, though, included stock incentives that are not as valuable as the original calculations envisioned.
Bailey: I read stuff like this all the time and think, wow I could live the rest of my life in luxury on just $200,000. It blows my mind just to think about how out of touch with the rest of us these people are. They receive a yearly bonus of 1.5 million & they actually think its a average wage, when it takes most of us a life time to make that much!