New Yahoo boss Marissa Mayer given £37m pay package

Marissa Mayer has been given a £37m pay package (Getty Images)

Yahoo is giving its new chief executive Marissa Mayer a compensation package worth more than 59 million dollars (£37m) over the next few years.

The company said in a regulatory filing that Ms Mayer, 37, who was lured away from rival Google, would receive an annual salary of one million dollars (£636,000). She is also eligible for a two million-dollar (£1.27m) bonus, and 12 million (£7.6m) in restricted stock and stock options over several years.

She will also receive 30 million dollars (£19m) in the form of a one-time retention award if she stays at Yahoo for five years.

Yahoo says it will also give Ms Mayer restricted stock valued at 14 million dollars (£8.9m) to partially compensate her for forfeiting money she would have received at Google.

That said, the most she will take home this year is 5.4 million dollars (£3.4m). That includes her salary, bonus and part of the "make-whole" compensation, according to Yahoo spokeswoman Dana Lengkeek.

The typical chief executive of a public company in the US made 9.6 million dollars (£6.1m) last year, according to an analysis by The Associated Press using data from Equilar, an executive pay research firm.

Yahoo's previous - and short-lived - CEO Scott Thompson, had a 27 million-dollar (£17m) pay package. His salary and bonus were the same as Ms Mayer's, but Yahoo dangled more incentives in front of Ms Mayer to lure her away from Google.

Mr Thompson stepped aside in mid-May amid an uproar over misleading information on his resume.

On Tuesday Ms Mayer became Yahoo's fifth CEO in five years. She spent the previous 13 years at Google where she was the internet search leader's 20th employee and helped build some of its most famous products.