Yahoo’s axed chief operating officer left the internet giant with a golden parachute worth $58 million (£34 million) — after 15 months in the job.
Henrique de Castro earned more than Marissa Mayer, his boss and the woman who fired him, for his spell at Yahoo, pocketing $3.8 million (£2.25 million) per month or $125,000 (£74,250) per day.
That’s considerably more than even the best-paid football stars: Gareth Bale’s pay package at Real Madrid is reported to be £15.6 million, which works out at £36,500 a day.
Ms Mayer, one of Google’s first employees who was poached from that search giant by Yahoo, made de Castro her first big hire — bringing him across from Google four months after she joined Yahoo in July 2012. Then in January this year Ms Mayer said she had “made the difficult decision” to sack de Castro after concluding that he was not reviving Yahoo’s ad sales.
But because de Castro had a huge stock allowance and Yahoo shares have soared since Ms Mayer’s arrival, he pocketed $58 million.
Mayer’s pay packet was $62 million (£36.8 million) for 2012 and last year.
The bumper pay deals have not gone down well with shareholders: last month, investors filed a lawsuit against Yahoo directors and de Castro, alleging that the board wasted corporate assets and breached its responsibilities by failing to understand the latter’s pay deal.
Yahoo defended de Castro’s package saying its board believed he “had a unique set of highly valuable skills and experiences that would be key to returning the company to long-term growth as success.”
