The board of yahoo announced the other day that its Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Marissa Mayer would not be paid her annual bonus for 2016. In Yahoo's 10-K filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) it stated that Mayer would not be paid her annual cash bonus for the previous year and for her part Mayer offered to pass up on receiving her annual equity award for 2017.
In relation to this move Yahoo's general counsel and top lawyer Ron Bell resigned from his post with the company after the board's completed investigation into the 2014 hacking and theft of information from over 500 million user accounts.
Yahoo and Mayer issue statements on the punishment
Following Mr. Bell's resignation Yahoo stated, "no payments are being made to Mr. Bell in connection with his resignation." They also said that the board's independent committee found enough information on the hacks where they felt that the legal team had sufficient information to pursue further inquiry into the 2014 hacks.
As the head legal person at Yahoo this lack of pursuit ultimately fell on Mr. Bell and was the reason for his resignation. For her part Ms. Mayer posted a response to Yahoo's Tumblr page, saying she took responsibility as the CEO and wished to see her bonus redistributed to the company's employees.
Recent security breaches continue to plague Yahoo
Last year Yahoo disclosed to the public that two massive user-data breaches by hackers had taken place, once in 2013 and again in 2014. Between the two hacks, one done by an unknown party and the other by "state sponsored" hackers, Yahoo had at least 1.5 billion user and email accounts stolen.
The incidents, which got disclosed in September and December, threatened a deal Yahoo had with Verizon. These two breaches did end up hurting the company financially as Verizon only nominally brought Yahoo's internet businesses for $4.48 billion, which was $350 million less because of the issue. The Verizon deal is expected to officially go through in the second financial quarter of 2017.
