It must be nice being Henrique De Castro right about now. The man just got axed from Yahoo! only to get a severance package worth $58 million. You read that correctly. Being let go and getting more than $50 million to do so. The actual firing took place back in January however the information was made public yesterday by a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
With a severance package that big you might expect that De Castro had a long tenure at Yahoo!. That expectation would be way off however as Henrique was only at the company for 15 months. Prior to Yahoo!, De Castro held a position at Google in sales.
If you want to do some funny math (like Forbes did), De Castro earned $244,000 a day if you include work on weekends. If you’ll recall, Marissa Meyer, Yahoo’s CEO, hired De Castro back in 2012 after she left Google. At the time De Castro was one of Google’s top sales execs.
When Yahoo hired De Castro, its board believed “he had a unique set of highly valuable skills and experiences that would be key to returning the Company to long-term growth and success,” the filing said. Yahoo’s shareholders disagreed. On March 14, they filed suit, claiming the board wasted corporate assets and breached its fiduciary duty to understand how much De Castro would be entitled to receive.
It’s still somewhat of a mystery as to all the reasons why De Castro was fired but this video of him completely bombing a presentation of Yahoo’s vision might shed some light on things.
Image via Reuters
