It's important to note that Yahoo's board did not give her a 69% raise this year or decide that her performance over the last year was worth more than $42M. Th

It's important to note that Yahoo's board did not give her a 69% raise this year or decide that her performance over the last year was worth more than $42M. This is the compensation she agreed to as part of contract when she joined as CEO. Ever year we see a multitude of articles highlighting CEOs of poorly performing companies who had a huge increase in compensation, but they completely miss the point. There is no "news" here, per se. It's just like a professional sports player who signs a very large, guaranteed 5-year deal. It doesn't really matter if the payments each year are equal or if they are backloaded so that the player gets a huge "raise" in his final years. Just take the total size of the contract, divide it by 5, and call that his effective yearly compensation. Now, it is certainly the case that we can debate whether the board overpaid for Mayer, but that's completely independent of this "news".