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Yahoo's chief operating officer has unexpectedly departed the company just over a year after he was hired to turn its advertising business around.
Henrique de Castro, Yahoo's second most senior executive, is leaving this week. No reason was given.Yahoo's Chief Operating Officer Unexpectedly Leaves [bbc.co.uk]
According to reports, there were tensions between Mr Castro and Ms Mayer, who had poached him from Google shortly after she took over at the company.
All told, Mr. de Castro will walk away with at least $88 million and as much as $109 million for his 15 months of work, according to an analysis of his pay package by the compensation research firm Equilar. (The exact amount depends on whether he receives his full performance award for 2013 and assumes he wasn’t fired for cause, like stealing from the company or lying on his résumé.)
Even by Silicon Valley standards, his pay was stratospheric. In fact, in 2012, he was the eighth-highest-paid executive in the region, according to Equilar.
Which raises a question: What were Yahoo’s board members thinking when they agreed to hire him in October 2012?Yahoo’s No. 2 Executive Made More Than His Boss [bits.blogs.nytimes.com]
What did Yahoo do between 2001 and 2007 under Semel's reign? Not much. And that's the problem.
Semel spent most of his time at Yahoo getting crushed by Google, an upstart he had a chance to buy. Later, he passed on Facebook and YouTube, too.
For all that, he collected an astounding $489.6 million, or almost half a billion dollars.
