In a stunning development that proves the gender pay gap still exists, Marissa Mayer’s male replacement as Yahoo CEO will make double her salary, according to an offer letter filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) this week.
Thomas McInerney is set to control Altaba, the re-branded version of Yahoo, and will make $2 million per year. Mayer has a current base salary of $1 million, according to Newsweek.
But don’t feel too bad for Mayer, as her salary is a small fraction of her total compensation package — and she will leave Yahoo with a $23 million golden parachute if and when the company is officially acquired by Verizon. However, the stark difference between Mayer and McInerney’s salaries is symbolic of the on-going battle for equal pay in America.
McInerney, formerly the CFO of InterActiveCorp, will replace Mayer when the deal becomes official. Verizon agreed to acquire Yahoo’s core business for $4.8 billion last July — eight years after the internet 1.0 icon rejected a $45 billion takeover offer from Microsoft.
Yahoo subsequently disclosed a security breach in 2013 that affected more than 1 billion of its users — as well as a separate one revealed in September that compromised more than 500 million accounts.
Those disclosures prompted reports in December that Verizon General Counsel Craig Silliman was looking for a price cut or killing the deal altogether. He ended up getting Yahoo on sale: $250 million off the original purchase price, to be exact.
Mayer has made more than $200 million in her four years at Yahoo.