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A list of Marissa Mayer's/Yahoo's accomplisments with her at the helm.... https://marissamayr.tumblr.com/post/161775943139/nostalgia-gratitude-optimism https:/

• dreamdu5t 9y ago
  Why is the CEO credited with market capitalization? They don't have anything to do with it.
  • mi100hael 9y ago
    Market cap = share price x shares How would you measure a CEO's performance of a public company if not share price?
    • antidaily 9y ago
      Well let's start with that logo redesign.
    • bitJericho 9y ago
      http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-buybacks-pay/ http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-buyba...
    • Retric 9y ago
      Over the long term the delta between company X profit and similar company Y's profit. Granted this does not really work over less than a decade, but if BP, Shell, and Exxon move in lockstep then none of the CEOs are doing an exceptional job even if all three companies are wildly profitable.
      • dokein 9y ago
        How do you differentiate that from "all three CEOs are doing an exceptional job"?
        • obstinate 9y ago
          Well it's by definition not exceptional if all comparably placed CEOs are performing the same. :) But, nitpick aside, I agree there's a flaw here, since it doesn't differentiate between the CEOs performing "to spec" or under spec. Though, when you get to have an agglomeration as big as a large multinational, there have to be serious missteps or moments of brilliance to really differentiate a bad and good CEO. Otherwise, it's hard to tease out the relationship between company performance and market share, entrenched employees, quality of invested capital, etc.
        • Retric 9y ago
          They would not be moving in lockstep. Basically, companies are never actually identical so optimal moves for every company is going to be slightly different and this will compound over time. However, if each company is making the same moves then and getting the same results then none of them are making optimal choices. Consider defense contractors may all be in the same market, but they have different contracts. Farms on the other hand are selling a commodity and are often mostly just at the whims of market forces.
      • bduerst 9y ago
        >delta between company X profit and similar company Y's profit If that were true then Amazon is doing terribly under Bezos. Profits over time is an incomplete metric for measuring company success because CEOs can decide to invest it all back into capex.
    • dreamdu5t 9y ago
      Market cap not something attributable to the CEO, anymore than it's attributable to the Janitor. Nowhere in that equation is the CEO actions. They don't determine share price or number of shares. Share price isn't correlated with CEO actions. Janitors at Yahoo also presided over a 33B growth in capitalization.
      • IanDrake 9y ago
        Do you understand how management works? You're expressing a very naive view on the subject.
        • obstinate 9y ago
          And perhaps a deeply cynical one.
        • dreamdu5t 9y ago
          How is it naive, exactly? If Marissa Meyer orders everyone to work from home, then that can be attributed to her. She can take credit for that. It was her action. But if the stock price goes up $5 today, there's no way to show it was a result of ordering everyone to work from home. If you want to make the argument that Meyers actions led to 33b in market cap growth then make that argument. What did Meyer personally do that caused the growth in market cap, and how?
          • gvb 9y ago
            Sold Yahoo to Verizon. "Yahoo stock was up by 8.5% at the time of writing." http://www.businessinsider.com/yahoo-verizon-sale-approved-2017-6 http://www.businessinsider.com/yahoo-verizon-sale-approved-2...
            • dreamdu5t 9y ago
              But the stock price could have fallen. She should be credited with negotiating the deal and selling the company for 4.5B, and when she resigns the market cap isn't going to drop. She's not responsible for the market cap at all.
    • threepipeproblm 9y ago
      For some reason, people used to think a track record of profits was relevant.
      • maxxxxx 9y ago
        That's pretty outdated :-)
    • bogomipz 9y ago
      >"How would you measure a CEO's performance of a public company if not share price?" Stock price is most certainly not the only dimension by which to measure CEO performance. In fact relying solely on that metric is exactly what fosters our current culture of absurd CEO compensation packages. Both "Operational Impact" and "Leadership effectiveness" are equally important considerations[1]. Quoting from the source: "Operational impact. Operational impact refers to the CEO’s influence on the company’s effectiveness in operational areas, such as customer satisfaction, new product introduction, or productivity enhancement, and how well the firm implements its strategy. Operational impact measures often give a better indication of a company’s underlying potential to create value because they are directly related to the immediate stock price, which is subject to market-wide volatility. While still subject to external and internal forces outside of the CEO’s immediate control, this type of performance is more closely related to the CEO’s actions. Leadership effectiveness. Leadership effectiveness addresses how well the CEO carries out his or her responsibilities, both in terms of executing specific role responsibilities—identifying a successor, meeting with key customers and investors, developing a long-term strategy—and the quality of those actions—communicating with external stakeholders, energizing the organization, and gaining the confidence of investors.Rivero and Nadler (2003)." Source: [1] https://saylordotorg.github.io/text_corporate-governance/s10-01-ceo-performance-evaluation.html https://saylordotorg.github.io/text_corporate-governance/s10...
      • bluetwo 9y ago
        Sure, but these factors, at least in theory, are reflected in the stock price.
        • didibus 9y ago
          I guess not necessarily. Maybe given a lot of data, over a long period of time, you could see some of it reflected. But factors such as overall stock market performance, growth due to the market itself, like if mobile grew 500%, you'd expect all stock related to that market to grow also. You might also have artificially inflated bubbles, though you could argue a CEO that can inflate the stock might be good, if you're looking into a quick turnaround, in the long term, it could hurt the business more so. Even with those out of the way, it undermines the contribution of other employees, like CTO, CFO, the VPs, etc. Unless the CEO was the one who contributed to their recruitment.
    • briandear 9y ago
      PROFIT.
    • gnaritas 9y ago
      > How would you measure a CEO's performance of a public company if not share price? Wow... um, how about profit, it is a business after all. Business isn't about the share price.
      • allannienhuis 9y ago
        Business is almost always all about share price for the shareholders, who are the ones who set a CEO's salary (via the board). A drop is share price can diminish or even wipe out any dividends a company might pay out of profits. Many companies don't pay dividends at all (reinvesting profit for growth), so the only possible gain a shareholder has in those cases is through capital gains from selling stock.
        • gnaritas 9y ago
          > Business is almost always all about share price for the shareholders And there's what wrong with the world in one short sentence. The market was supposed to be about raising capital so companies could go out and earn profits, the company shouldn't worry or care about its share price in the secondary market, it should be taking the capital and making good business decisions that lead to making profits. Letting the share price be the metric that decisions are made on is letting the tail wag the dog and leads to short term quarterly thinking and bad decisions all around; it's not how a good company is run. Profits lead to good companies which lead to good share prices, you aim for profits and good share prices are the result, not the other way around.
          • mi100hael 9y ago
            > the company shouldn't worry or care about its share price in the secondary market But "the company" is literally owned by people who buy & sell portions of it in the second market. There are only two reasons to buy shares of a company: dividends and price gains. Owners of company first and foremost want their investment to appreciate not depreciate, ergo company cares about share price first and foremost.
    • known 9y ago
      http://www.netmba.com/mgmt/ob/motivation/mcgregor/ http://www.netmba.com/mgmt/ob/motivation/mcgregor/
• samfisher83 9y ago
  You can thank Jerry Yang for the market cap increase since he bought the alibaba stock. They could be worth twice as much if they haden't sold 1/2 their stake back to alibaba. https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2014/09/30/how-jerry-yang-made-the-most-lucrative-bet-in-tech-history/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2014/09/30/how-jerry...
  • adventured 9y ago
    It's even worse than that. Alibaba forced Yahoo to sell a sizable part of their position against their will, under threat of what might happen otherwise. Then Alibaba, specifically Jack Ma, stole roughly $30 billion from Yahoo and Softbank by removing Ant Financial (and directly transferring ownership to himself [1]) from Alibaba without proper compensation to Yahoo and Softbank. You can't do anything about that sort of extraordinary theft in China, so that was that. And now about half or more of Ma's wealth is made up of what he stole from Yahoo and Softbank shareholders in that maneuver (out of his $40 billion, roughly $20-$21 is Alibaba, the rest is Ant Financial). [1] per Bloomberg: "Ma controls Ant Financial through two China-based holding companies, Jun Han and Jun Ao, which own 42 percent and 34 percent of Ant Financial respectively, according to Alibaba's 2015 annual report."
    • fav_collector 9y ago
      I don't really understand the Ant Financial part or what the threat was. Could you elaborate further?
      • fjdlwlv 9y ago
        The CEO of Alibaba decided that Alibaba would give away half of its assets to the CEO
    • caminante 9y ago
      I forgot about that. From what I just re-scanned, you aptly phrase it as "under threat of what might happen" if Bartz (former YHOO CEO) had fought it out. From my crude timeline (below), I'm assuming that YHOO was more concerned about Alibaba (PrivateCo + Chinese jurisdiction) embezzling the rest of the assets, not that Alipay was extremely valuable and en route to becoming the most valuable private company in the world -- which it did! 2014: Alibaba goes public with IPO... 2011: Alibaba spun off Alipay and settles with Yahoo for 37.5% of Alipay (with $2-6B contingency clause should Alipay undergo a liquidity event.) This is after Jack Ma got tapped on the shoulder by the Chinese government and told he needs to comply with new regulations for third-party payment services. Or at least, that's Ma's story. 2001: Yahoo purchased 43% ownership of Alibaba in exchange for Yahoo China and $1B
• Infernal 9y ago
  Can someone explain how Yahoo's valuation increased by $33B, and yet it was sold for only $4.5B? Was Yahoo terribly in debt when Marissa took over? Or does the metric for valuation have no basis in reality?
  • phonon 9y ago
    Most of Yahoo!'s value was in their assets, not their operating business. The operating business was sold to Verizon. The assets were spun off as "Altaba".
    • Infernal 9y ago
      Ah, thanks! That makes a lot more sense.
• mtgx 9y ago
  Mayer deserves no credit for Alibaba's value so that should be discounted from Mayer's "successes" at Yahoo.
  • valuearb 9y ago
    A CEOs main job is resource allocation. She deserves a lot of credit for not selling Alibaba shares. There were lots of voices saying sell it before it's too late over the last few years.
    • CRConrad 9y ago
      Huh - "lots of voices saying sell"? All I ever heard was how those were the only thing of value they had (and berating them for selling half of them back whenever that was).
• zeteo 9y ago
  > Our market cap has gone from $18B to $51B > approximately 15 percent equity stake in China’s Alibaba Group Holding Ltd 15 percent of Alibaba is about $52.5 billion. I'm not sure why we're even discussing anything else. It's like saying that my contribution to family finances is: a) not selling my parents' house, which is now worth half a million. b) having $1.32 in change in a little ashtray by the door.
  • dragonwriter 9y ago
    Well, except that your change in the ashtray is a positive contribution.
    • cryptica 9y ago
      Yeah but a negligible one. As a long time Yahoo mail user, I was very disappointed with Yahoo under Mayer. Firstly they did a terrible job with the Yahoo mail web client; it became slow and clunky and inherited the worst parts of Gmail and none of the good parts. Secondly my account was hacked and to this day my old contacts still receive spoof emails from "me" (though not actually my email address) about weight loss supplements. I am ashamed to tell people my email address. I started moving to Gmail.
      • jondubois 9y ago
        Oh and the new logo sucks.
        • bdefore 9y ago
          https://www.inc.com/cody-steve/yahoo-logo-redesign-marissa-mayer.html https://www.inc.com/cody-steve/yahoo-logo-redesign-marissa-m...
      • rhizome 9y ago
        [Yahoo Mail] became slow and clunky and inherited the worst parts of Gmail and none of the good parts. Yahoo and LinkedIn are basically right next door to each other and employees from one routinely hop to the other, so it makes sense that they share production values.
• threepipeproblm 9y ago
  By my read, the list of accomplishments for customers is notably short of anything positive that Yahoo did during Mayer's tenure, except for the fantasy sports. Non-rhetorical question: do people really think she did a good job because of how she managed the negatives? I don't follow Yahoo! that closely, so the below is primarily based on headlines I've seen in the past few years... let me know if I have butchered any of the details. The bulleted points quote Mayers' statement. * We became 1 of 3 internet companies in the world with more than 1B monthly users * We grew our monthly mobile users to more than 650M (one of the largest in the world) by launching and improving our products for mobile devices Translation: We rode the wave of massive Internet trends, with negligible profit taking, and are now taking credit for the aforementioned trends, which every global Internet company experienced. * We dramatically focused our product strategy, dispensing 150+ subscale products and features Translation: We admitted that a large part of our holdings/investments were non-performing or ill-advised. * We invested in search, building an offering that drew on strengths from Microsoft, Google and Yahoo, to provide dramatically improved search to our users and attract impactful partnerships, like Mozilla Translation: We admitted total defeat in the business most consumers still think of as defining us, to the point that we now resell the services of the competitors who won. * We fundamentally improved Yahoo Mail, completely rewriting much of the infrastructure to provide a far more flexible and reliable system, while creating a robust mobile offering. Mobile Mail recently surpassed desktop Mail in daily users, which shows the power of the product and the platform we reinvented Translation: After taking for granted one of the few Yahoo products with a lot of users, we finally started adopting the UI patterns that allowed our competitors to outdo us in new user acquisition. But we managed to make headlines for confusing/tricking users who wanted to leave after massive security breaches. * We invested in our homepage and key verticals – news, sports, finance, and lifestyles – with each remaining as the go-to destinations in their categories. And, they have found new followings on mobile through the Yahoo app, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, and Yahoo Fantasy. It’s hard to believe, but, in 2012, we didn’t have any of these 4 now-cornerstone apps on iOS or Android, we weren’t developing native apps, and we didn’t use these sought-after brands outside of desktop. Today, our users collectively spend an equivalent of 1,400 years on these products EVERY day. Translation: We avoided losing some key properties that people used think were worth a lot before Google came along. Plus fantasy football!! We found a way to say many millions people use or sites daily, which sounds ever more impressive to people who are bad at math. * We bolstered our security defenses with cross-company initiatives like SSL, HTML5, Account Key, and HTTPS Translation: We started improving security, mostly after some of the largest and most publicized security breaches in history. * We committed to and invested in technical excellence in our architectures, reducing user-impacting incidents by more than half over the past 5 years Translation: we fixed a lot of bugs in our products. * We won 2 Apple Design Awards in 2013 and 2014, and put unified product design front and center with Fuji Translation: A company who beat our pants by almost every measure in the marketplace, said we made 2 good things, which are not worth specifically naming... the important thing is that Apple liked them, even though they apparently killed off the Apple Design Awards after commoditizing "flat design".
• grafporno 9y ago
  > We bolstered our security defenses with cross-company initiatives like SSL, HTML5, Account Key, and HTTPS Wat. HTML5 is a security measure now?
  • aphextron 9y ago
    Sure it is. Replacing the main use cases for Flash with native HTML5 video and Canvas elements is a big win for security. That wasn't fully possible for sites like Yahoo with a lot of legacy users until just the past couple years.
  • mtgx 9y ago
    And was that before or after they allowed the NSA access to their servers? https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/yahoo-government-email-scanner-was-actually-a-secret-hacking-tool https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/yahoo-government-...
• kristianp 9y ago
  > Sadly the list of employee gains seems very spartan compared to the shareholder gains. Didn't shareholders get stock options as part of their package?
• fjdlwlv 9y ago
  Those accomplishments are mostly things they attempted, not successful outcomes they achieved. Like bragging about building​ products that consumers didn't buy.
• valuearb 9y ago
  Employees had stock options. The stock tripled in a relatively short time. They did well.