Yahoo: $1 Salary, $80M Compensation

Terry Semel, Yahoo's chairman, received a $80 million compensation for his $1 salary after his stock options were highly increased at the end of the last year. Back in 2006, the Yahoo chairman reduced his salary to no more than $1, receiving more stock options that are now bringing a huge amount of money. According to Kiplinger, Terry Semel had 800.000 stock options with an estimated value of $8.36 million while the compensation brought him 7.3 million stock options at about $71.4 million. The $1 salary was decided in May 2006, cutting the chairman's revenues from about $250.000. However, he managed to obtain a huge amount of money from the stock quotes, an obvious sign that Yahoo evolves and brings more money to its founders.

"The stock options awarded to Semel have exercise prices ranging between $31.59 and $40.68. Yahoo shares closed Monday at $28.04, down 30 cents, on the Nasdaq Stock Market. By any measure, Semel received a far more generous package than the triumvirate that runs Google, whose 2006 profit of $3.1 billion more than doubled Yahoo's. Investors have rewarded Google by driving up its market value to nearly $150 billion, more than tripling Yahoo's," the same source added.

The $1 pay cut was similar with the one announced by Google's founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Back in 2006, the two search giant's presidents decided to impose themselves a considerable pay cut along with the CEO, Eric Schmidt. However, their revenues are quite incredible, so I guess nobody has to suffer from the lack of money. As you might know, Google's revenues for the first quarter of 2007 were highly increased in comparison with the same period of the last year.