New Yahoo CEO gets pay package worth at least $19M

ByABC News
January 16, 2009, 3:09 PM

SAN FRANCISCO -- Yahoo will pay new CEO Carol Bartz at least $19 million in cash and stock during her first year on the job and top it off with an incentive package likely to yield a huge windfall if she can turn around the long-struggling Internet company.

The details of Bartz's compensation emerged Thursday in a regulatory filing made two days after Yahoo hired the tough-minded technology veteran to replace co-founder Jerry Yang as its chief executive.

Bartz's hard-driving management style is expected be a dramatic departure from Yang's laid-back approach. Her paycheck definitely be will much different.

For starters, Bartz will receive a salary of $1 million, double the $500,000 she had been getting as executive chairman of her previous employer, software maker Autodesk Inc.

Yang, already a billionaire from his holdings in Yahoo, had settled for a salary of just $1. Before Yang took over, Yahoo's previous CEO, Terry Semel, received a $250,001 salary in his last full year on the job before stepping down amid shareholder outrage over the company's decision to award him stock options valued at $71 million.

Bartz, 60, could supplement her salary with a cash bonus up to $4 million, depending on Yahoo's financial performance. She also is guaranteed a 2009 payment of $2.5 million in cash and $7.5 million in Yahoo stock to make up for benefits and stock awards she relinquished at Autodesk to take the new job.

Yahoo will award her with another stock grant initially valued at $8 million as part of annual incentives given to all the Sunnyvale-based company's brass. Yang usually declined these grants.

Bartz stands to make the most from 5 million stock options that Yahoo plans to give her at the end of the month. Yahoo is waiting to grant and price the options on Jan. 30 the same day as all other employees hired this month, said company spokesman Brad Williams.

Like most stock options, the awards will have an exercise price equal to the shares' underlying market value at the time of the grant.