The company behind one of the biggest search engines in the world is poised to make you an offer. They are worth $16 billion on paper and earned closed to $7 billion by the end of 2007. What will they pay you? The answer is made clear in an SEC statement filed by Yahoo!
Carol Bartz, the new CEO of Yahoo! will be earning $1 million per year before taxes and withholdings. Bartz will also be eligible to make an annual target bonus of 200% of the annual salary based on company performance. She will also be granted stock options of 5 million shares. In terms of time off, Yahoo! will offer Bartz 4 weeks of vacation per year, 10 paid holidays, and 2 personal floating holidays.
The SEC document also acknowledges that President Sue Decker will be resigning and Jerry Yang will be assuming the role as Chief Yahoo! once again.
The first thing I thought of when reading this document was that this was an impressive salary to be receiving as a CEO, hired from an external company. But then I remembered Terry Semel’s compensation…
In June 2007, Semel resigned as CEO of Yahoo! due to shareholder dissatisfaction of his salary. In 2006, Semel’s salary was $1, but he had stock options worth $70 million. Semel made over $500 million through his tenure at Yahoo! Semel was granted options of over $110 million as a bonus to join Yahoo! Semel still has another 18.6 million unexercised stock options in Yahoo!
Clearly the position that Yahoo! is in right now isn’t as good as it was before. If Bartz is able to undo the mistakes that Semel and Yang made in the past, then I’m sure she’ll see a substantial amount more heading her way.
Carol Bartz, former CEO of Autodesk Inc. has accepted an offer to become CEO of Yahoo Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO). Sixty year old Bartz will be taking the position that was formerly held by Jerry Yang. Yang was looking for a CEO to replace him for the last two months.
Some of the issues that Bartz will have to deal with as CEO is market share loss from Google Inc., multiple deals landing on the table that includes the breaking up of Yahoo!, a potential merger with AOL, and a declining stock price.
Bartz is known to be a very tough CEO. She pushed for professional management practices at Autodesk and tame the culture set by John Walker, founder of the company. When Bartz stepped up as CEO of Autodesk in the 1990s, the company was bringing in $350 million. In 2006 when Bartz stepped down, Autodesk was bringing in about $1.6 billion.
Although Bartz has very little experience on the Internet, “Maybe that would be a good thing for Yahoo! right now,” stated Seth O. Harris Jr., an EVP and high tech recruiter at Cook Associates. Employees may be looking for someone with strong operational experience. Yang was a bit of an emotional CEO, thus the reason for turning down the Microsoft offer. And Terry Semel, the CEO before Yang, was too much of a glamorous deal maker. It’s about time Yahoo! becomes more operational efficient.
Yahoo Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO), the search engine company that almost got bought out by Microsoft, has been searching for a new CEO since Jerry Yang stepped down in November. There were talks about hiring former Vodafone Group PLC CEO Arun Sarin, but he chose to withdraw. The candidate that is rumored to be stepping up is former Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADSK) CEO Carol Bartz. Although it is not confirmed, she is “on the list” according to a WSJ source.
The board still has to put an offer together, but it is believed that it will be given out next week. Yahoo! wants to choose a new leader before their fourth quarter earnings announcement. If Bartz does become the new CEO, then it shows that Yahoo! prefers to have someone with consumer products experience of Internet advertising. Bartz is currently the exec. chairman of Autodesk and a board member of Cisco Systems Inc. Jerry Yang is also on the Cisco board.
Earlier this week at CES, Yahoo! announced that they have signed deal with Samsung, LG, and Sony for converging the Internet with TV. TVs manufactured with these partners will have the option to run widgets on the side. The widgets will be able to play YouTube clips, send out Twitter tweets, network on MySpace, and view images on Flickr.
