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Mayer was working for those shareholders. “Over the last five years, Yahoo shareholders couldn’t have done a lot better than this.” “The only sign you can point to when evaluating a company over a long period of time is how shareholders have done in the exchange,” said David Wise, who heads North American sales at Korn Ferry Hay Group, a firm that advises companies on executive pay packages. Mayer’s pay was mostly in stock and stock options, and she reaped the rewards alongside the other stockholders. After the $4.5 billion sale to Verizon, shareholders will still own an investment company with $57 billion of stock in two Asian internet companies, Alibaba Group and Yahoo Japan. Yahoo’s share price more than tripled during her tenure. It is rooted partly in the never-lose structure of modern executive compensation packages, but also in two farsighted investments made long ago by one of Yahoo’s founders, Jerry Yang.īy Wall Street’s most basic yardstick - Yahoo’s stock price - Ms. Mayer receive more than $900,000 a week? The answer, like so many things about Yahoo, is surprisingly complicated. “But the company was not run well under her tenure.” “Everyone acknowledges that it was a difficult situation to come into,” said Brian Wieser, an analyst at Pivotal Research who has studied Yahoo for years. The company ended up so weakened that its board had little choice but to sell. Yahoo’s staff shrank by almost 50 percent. Users shifted ever more attention to Google, Facebook and other rivals. Advertisers, Yahoo’s bread and butter, fled the service. But during her tenure, Yahoo was hit by two of the biggest privacy breaches in history. Mayer, now 42, was hailed as a savior when she left Google for Yahoo in 2012. It will also conclude the remarkable five-year run of Yahoo’s chief executive, Marissa Mayer, who was paid nearly a quarter of a billion dollars - a generous sum even by Silicon Valley’s lofty standards - while presiding over the company’s continued decline. SAN FRANCISCO - When a withered Yahoo is absorbed by Verizon Communications in the next week or so, it will be the end of an era for one of the pioneering names of the internet age.