Yahoo's new CEO, a longtime Google exec, becomes one of Silicon Valley's most powerful female figures even as she faces big challenges in crafting a content strategy for the troubled web giant.
Marissa Mayer, the freshly minted CEO of Yahoo, could earn $71 million over five years, according to a regulatory filing Thursday.
Already worth an estimated $300 million, according to CelebrityNetWorth.com, because she was an early employee at Google, her Yahoo compensation package is high by some standards, but it makes her a piker compared to some of Hollywood’s best-paid executives.
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Assuming she hits certain goals and the stock rises as she undoubtedly hopes it will, her compensation averages out to $14.2 million annually.
That puts her above Cablevision CEO James Dolan, who made $11.4 million in 2011, but well below a host of others, including Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes ($25.9 million), Walt Disney CEO Robert Iger ($31.4 million) and News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch ($33.3 million in fiscal 2011).
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And then there’s the upper ecehelon of CEO compensation in Hollywood, occupied last year by Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman ($43.1 million), Discovery CEO David Zaslav ($52.4 million) and CBS CEO Leslie Moonves ($69.9 million).
While Mayer’s compensation seems better than that of her recent predecessors — largely because they didn’t last long enough to earn extravagant cash and stock bonuses — its well below what Terry Semel earned.
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Semel, who served 24 years as co-CEO of Warner Bros. before joining Yahoo a little more than a decade ago, earned some $500 million during the seven years he was CEO there.
CNN, though, ran the numbers and determined that Mayer’s $71 million over five years isn’t an exact ceiling, as she could exceed that threshold by a “signficant” margin depending on the stock price.
