text: Mayer to Get Close to $60 Million (And Maybe More) in Overall Compensation for Yahoo’s Top Job 
   
   Yahoo revealed in a regulatory filing that it could be paying its new CEO Marissa Mayer a total of close to $60 million to turn the company around. 
   
   The mega-sum includes salary, equity grants, stock options, a make-whole payment for the Google shares she left behind and, perhaps most remarkably, a $30 million one-time retention award. 
   
   The amount, which is a whole lot more than what the last two Yahoo CEOs — Carol Bartz and Scott Thompson — were paid is, um, rather large. 
   
   One Yahoo board member had characterized the pay package to me as “big, big bucks,” as I reported earlier today. 
   
   I would say so! 
   
   (Side note: Mayer is already extraordinarily wealthy from her stint at Google, where she was its 20th employee.) 
   
   Here’s the breakdown of the largely performance-based compensation: 
   
   The salary amount is typical at $1 million, with an annual bonus of up to 200 percent of the base salary, which is $2 million. But, according to Yahoo’s employment letter, she could also get up to a 400 percent bonus, dependent on exceeding targets, which is $4 million. 
   
   Mayer also gets an equity award for 2012 of $12 million in stock ($6 million) and options ($6 million) that vests over three years. (She could get another similar grant annually, but I did not include that in the overall number, which is $12 million annually or more if she exceeds targets.) 
   
   The really big number is a huge up-front, one-time retention award, vesting over five years, of $15 million in stock and $15 million in options. 
   
   Finally, there is a make-whole payment of $14 million for the stock she left behind at Google. 
   
   Overall, that means about $5.4 million for the rest of this year and could add up to $20 million each year to come. 
   
   The pay package was hotly debated by the board as to whether the high-profile exec was worth the huge amount. 
   
   While Mayer is considered a talented techie, a very strong decision maker and adept at product innovation, some of the board’s directors raised concerns about her and paying so much to retain her. 
   
   One issue: She had been notably passed over by Google CEO Larry Page for one of the major unit jobs in his reorganization of the company, while others in her peer group had been promoted. 
   
   That said, since such company ups and downs happen all the time, others argued that Mayer was just the kind of disruptive agent of change that Yahoo needs, especially because she could inspire its engineers and also attract much needed talent. 
   
   The enormous compensation was pushed through, said several sources, by Dan Loeb, the one-time activist shareholder who now appears to be the puppet master of the Yahoo board. He owns about six percent of the Silicon Valley Internet giant. 
   
   (Another side note: Multiple sources tell me that Loeb has been making calls to all kinds of Internet figures this week, looking for high-fives for his landing of Mayer, a hiring that was largely engineered by him.) 
   
   Her appointment has surely garnered a lot of attention for Yahoo, with massive media coverage of the dynamic young exec. Some of the coverage has focused on her being a woman and also on the fact that she is currently pregnant. 
   
   But much of it is focused on how Yahoo — a deeply troubled company that has been trying to revive itself for many years now without success and with a lot of management mishegas — has been able to attract such a high-profile and impressive-resumed leader to goose both its products and its stock. 
   
   Let’s hope Mayer can do just that, because Yahoo is surely paying up big-time for the privilege. 
   
   Please take a gander here at the filing, directly from the Department of the Internet Rich Get Richer: 
   
   YHOO-20120719-8K-20120715 
   
   
   
   Please see this disclosure related to me and Google. ||||| Getty Images Marissa Mayer in 2011 
   
   Yahoo Inc. showed just how big it is betting that new Chief Executive Marissa Mayer can change its fortunes. 
   
   New Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer will receive as much as $100 million in compensation, stock, bonus and retention awards over the next five years, according to a Thursday regulatory filing. George Stahl has details of The News Hub. Photo: Bloomberg. 
   
   Yahoo's new CEO Marissa Mayer is set to make $100 million over the next five years. WSJ's Amir Efrati has the details of Mayer's mega pay package. Photo: Getty Images. 
   
   A Struggling Internet Pioneer See key dates in the history of Yahoo, which helped to revolutionize the Web. View Interactive 
   
   Ms. Mayer will receive up to $100 million in compensation, stock, bonus and retention awards over the next five years, according to a Thursday regulatory filing by the Sunnyvale, Calif., Internet company. 
   
   Ms. Mayer is expected to receive around $5.4 million from Yahoo for the remainder of this year and around $20 million a year after that, though some of that amount is tied to performance targets set by the board. 
   
   While it is hard to make a direct comparison, Ms. Mayer's predecessors, Scott Thompson and Carol Bartz, received compensation packages worth $27 million and $44.6 million, respectively, over several years. Both CEOs departed prematurely. Mr. Thompson resigned in May after a five-month stint, while Ms. Bartz was fired last fall after more than 2½ years at Yahoo. 
   
   Ms. Mayer, 37 years old, joined Yahoo as CEO on Tuesday after a 13-year career at rival Google Inc., where most recently she was a vice president of local, maps and location services. 
   
   The Yahoo pay package includes restricted stock units valued at $14 million in order to "partially compensate" Ms. Mayer for forfeiting her compensation from Google. It also includes a one-time retention award that is valued at $15 million and will vest over five years. 
   
   Ms. Mayer wasn't one of Google's top officers and so her compensation wasn't publicly disclosed, but she was employee No. 20 at the Internet search firm and received a windfall in the company's 2004 initial public offering. 
   
   Mark Reilly, a partner at 3C Compensation Consulting Consortium LLC in Chicago, said that Ms. Mayer's compensation package seemed "reasonable and competitive" given that Yahoo is "a huge company, a turnaround situation, and they got someone who was doing a fantastic job" at Google. Such a package is "needed to attract that type of talent," he said. 
   
   Ms. Mayer faces the challenge of turning around onetime Internet pioneer Yahoo, which has more than 700 million monthly unique visitors to its news, sports, entertainment and email sites but has failed to develop innovative Web services and is far behind its competitors in offering sophisticated tools for advertisers to buy ads on its sites. 
   
   Yahoo on Tuesday reported second-quarter profit dropped 4% from a year earlier to $227 million, while revenue slipped 1% to $1.22 billion. 
   
   —John Letzing contributed to this article. 
   
   Write to Amir Efrati at amir.efrati@wsj.com 
   
   A version of this article appeared July 20, 2012, on page B3 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Yahoo to Pay Mayer $100 Million Over Five Years.
target: – She may have an almost impossible task ahead of her at Yahoo, but at least Marissa Mayer will be well paid for her efforts. Very well paid. Kara Swisher of All Things D reports that Yahoo could end up shelling out at least $60 million over five years, more than the company paid its previous bosses. Mayer's annual salary is a par-for-the course $1 million, but then come the extras. "The big number is a huge one-time retention award, vesting over five years, of $15 million in stock and $15 million in options," writes Swisher. But even $60 million might be undershooting it. The Wall Street Journal says Mayer will get $100 million over five years—if the company hits all its performance targets.