Yahoo's outgoing COO given golden parachute

Tim Morse will receive 2 years salary, bonus and stock options for being fired

Remember last month when it was announced that Yahoo Chief Financial Officer Tim Morse would be leaving the company? Well, I hope you were not feeling too bad for him. Yes, he lost his job, and that’s always a bad thing for anybody, but I have a pretty strong feeling that he is going to be just fine.

Morse, whose departure from the company was announced on September 25, will be receiving a fairly large severance package from Yahoo due to his “termination without cause,” according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Morse will be receiving a package that includes 12 months salary, a bonus of an addition 12 months salary, part of his 2012 bonus and early vesting of stock awards.

Morse’s salary was $750,000, raised from $600,000 after he briefly took over as Yahoo CEO following the firing of Carol Bartz, meaning that he is walking away with $1.5 million in salary alone.  

When Yahoo first announced that Morse would be leaving no reason was given for his departure, and it was not clear if he has resigned or if had been asked to leave. Mayer called him at the time “a trusted leader” and said that she “personally relied on Tim's knowledge and leadership” during her first few months as CEO.

Now it is clear that Morse did not leave on his own accord. He is being replaced by Fortinet CFO Ken Goldman, who will be taking over the position this coming Monday. Morse will stay on at Yahoo for a transition period until November 15.

Goldman, who has also served as CFO of Siebel Systems, Excite@Home, Sybase, Cypress Semiconductor and VLSI Technology, will be eligible to receive up to $18 million in salary, bonuses and stock options over the next four years, it says in a September filing with the SEC.

With a $600,000 base salary, and an eligible bonus of 90%, that comes to $1.1 million. Goldman also received 76,000 in restricted stock units to make up for compensation lost when he left his previous job at Fortinet. Those units are worth about $1.2 million and will vest over 12 months. In addition, he was also given restricted stock and performance-based stock options worth as much as $12 million, which will vest over four years.

Morse is one of several new names filling out the ranks at Yahoo the last few months.

Mayer brought in former Google product marketing manager Andrew Schulte to be her new chief of staff. Mayer also hired Anne Espiritu, who ran consumer technology PR for Google, to handle corporate communications.

In August, Mayer hired Kathy Savitt as the new CMO at Yahoo.

Savitt was previously the founder and CEO of social commerce website Lockerz, and had been executive VP and CMO of American Eagle and a senior executive at Amazon.

In September, Jacqueline Reses was appointed executive vice president of people and development. Reses previously worked at Goldman Sachs for seven years, before leading the U.S. media group at Apax Partners.

Earlier this week, Google executive Henrique de Castro was hired as Yahoo’s newest chief operating officer.

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