Alibaba has been very, very good to Marissa Mayer.
The Yahoo CEO received compensation of as much as $214 million last year, according to an analysis by Equilar. Mayer's payday came mostly in the form of stock and option grants.
When Mayer, a former Google executive, joined Yahoo in 2012, she received a pay package of $35 million in restricted stock plus $21 million in options. Since then, the company's stock price has risen 140%. Equilar estimates that the $56 million package was worth $186 million at the end of 2013. In addition, she received restricted stock in 2013 that amounted to $23.7 million by years's end, as well as another $4.3 million in cash for a total of $214 million.
That compensation compares to $78.4 million for Oracle's Larry Ellison, the highest-paid CEO in the top 100 corporations.
Though Mayer will have to stay at Yahoo for a few more years, and the stock will have to stay at that level to receive that full amount, so far $57.8 million worth of Mayer's stock and options have already vested.
While Mayer may have had something to do with the run-up in stock price, many attribute Yahoo's stock gains to the company's 24% stake in Alibaba, the Chinese ecommerce giant. The fast-growing Alibaba is expected to go public this year in what may be the largest-ever IPO. When it does go public, Yahoo is expected to reduce its holding to about 14%. Without the the Alibaba stake, Mayer's compensation could be worth as little as $10 million, according to the New York Times.
Mayer isn't the only former Googler to benefit from Yahoo's largesse. Henrique de Castro, a former ad chief at Google, got a package worth $109 million after serving 15 months as Yahoo's chief operating officer.