Marissa Mayer Pay Raise: Yahoo! CEO Becomes Highest-Paid Woman Running U.S. Company After 69 Percent Pay Bump [PHOTO]
The CEO of Yahoo could officially be the highest-paid woman running a U.S. company these days, after receiving a 69 percent pay bump on top of her other 2014 earnings.
According to the San Jose Mercury News, Marissa Mayer took home a $42.1 million income last year after one-time incentives awarded to her after joining Yahoo in 2012 were also added to her annual $1 million salary. The additional $41 million was reportedly mostly from stock and option awards.
The incentives were a part of Mayer's original recruitment package from when she took over the company in 2012, to make up for the stocks she gave up in Google when she left that company. The amounts were later inflated from Yahoo's stake in Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba, which became a publicly traded company in the fall.
"Yahoo didn't decide to pay more" in 2014 than in 2013, Aaron Boyd, director of governance research at Equilar told the newspaper. "The way the rules are set up, she wasn't technically given the grant until 2014."
Mayer's tenure at the company has seen some strife, with activist shareholders previously stating that her nearly three-year tenure has failed to revive the struggling company's core business, but no proposals have yet been filed requesting a leadership change, allowing her to remain in her position.
Since taking over Yahoo, Mayer has brought in $103.7 million in pay, which currently makes her potentially the highest paid female Chief Executive of an American company. She has officially made more than Angela Ahrendts, a former Burberry chief executive who joined Apple as the head of retail and online sales last year, earning $73 million in the process.
Mayer could be beat out however after newly-appointed Oracle co-CEO Safra Catz's earnings are disclosed next month.