Carol Bartz’s 8 Blind Spots that Sunk Yahoo!

She came in full of piss and vinegar, but Carol Bartz's blind spots have derailed her tenure at Yahoo!

Read the full post here on Forbes.

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Yahoo!'s Defense of CEO Stock Sales Is Lame

By Eric Jackson 10/14/09 - 06:01 AM EDT

Stock quotes in this article: YHOO , MSFT , ADSK

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Yahoo!'s(YHOO Quote) responses to recent criticism of CEO Carol Bartz's stock sales have completely missed the point and appear designed to obfuscate. If she wants to show real leadership, she needs to stop misleading shareholders.

Let's review the recent controversy. Last month, I noted how Yahoo!(YHOO Quote) officers and directors sold $233 million in company stock but purchased only $103,000 worth of shares over the past two years. This was all spelled out in Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

I created a simple spreadsheet tabulating the sales and purchases and published it online. It quickly drew the attention of the media, which primarily focused on how new CEO Carol Bartz has sold almost $2 million in stock in her first five months on the job.

Since then, Bartz denied that she sold anything -- once on CNBC and once at the New York press event at which she launched Yahoo!'s new $100 million marketing campaign.

These sales were not open-market sales but related to the vesting of restricted stock units (RSUs) Bartz received from Yahoo! in 2009 as part of a $10 million "makeup grant" designed to compensate her for options she left on the table when she left her part-time executive chairman role at Autodesk(ADSK Quote) to take the helm at Yahoo! in January.

Bartz's initial tactical response to the criticism about the stock sales seems to have been: "Damn the filings, I'm going to deny, deny, deny." Perhaps she thought that if she denied it forcefully enough, the issue would just go away.

Yahoo!'s public relations team has taken a more nuanced approach. In response to questions from the Guardian and CNBC about the issue, they explained that the sales were due to taxes Bartz owed on the vested stock. Therefore, they suggested, these weren't "real" stock sales and were no cause for alarm for investors.

These responses fail to address the real issue, though. I've never said these are open-market sales, although they certainly qualify as sales (as the SEC filings show). And I have criticized Bartz for not digging into her own pocket to pay the taxes owed on the vested stock instead of selling parts of those stock grants to do so. Obviously, I can understand why more junior employees choose to sell vested stock to pay their taxes, but senior executives like Bartz have the money to easily cover their tax bills. I'm assuming Bartz thinks her actions as CEO can help Yahoo!'s stock go up in the future. In order to show her confidence in her own leadership -- and in Yahoo! stock -- she should pay the taxes herself and keep all of her vested shares.

Last week, I highlighted in a blog post that Bartz sold another $1.3 million at the end of September, again selling some of those third-quarter vested shares that were part of her "makeup grant" in order to pay her taxes.

Yahoo!'s public relations team objected to this latest post from me, calling my assertions on this and Bartz's other sales "inaccurate and misleading." They pointed out Bartz didn't make an open-market sale. I never said she did. They noted that Bartz's "makeup grant" was previously disclosed. That's what I said in my prior criticisms. They stated that the company "currently" withholds a portion of vested stock in order to pay taxes for "all" employees receiving vested stock because it is "practical" and added that "many companies" do the same. As I've said before, if Carol Bartz wanted to pay her taxes on this vested stock so she could keep all the Yahoo! stock possible, would some human relations bureaucrat at the company have told her no?

As a follow-up, Yahoo!'s public relations team was asked to point to the previously disclosed filing showing that Bartz was required by Yahoo! not to pay taxes herself on the vested stock she received from the company as part of her "makeup grant." In response, Yahoo! pointed to the company's 10-K filing made last February and specifically referred to exhibit 10.17(D) in that filing.

The exhibit lays out the specific terms of the employment agreement that Carol Bartz negotiated with the company relating to stock grants she is to receive. Indeed, the exhibit states that Yahoo! will withhold some of the vested stock to pay Bartz's taxes. However, that same section goes on to say that "[i]n the event the Company cannot (under applicable legal, regulatory, listing or other requirements) satisfy such tax withholding obligation in such method", Yahoo! might have to require Bartz to "pay such amount in cash or check."

There's nothing in this exhibit that says Bartz couldn't pay her own tax bill herself on the grant if she wanted to, in order to keep all her vested stock. Indeed, it's interesting that Exhibit 10.2(F) in the same filing, which refers to situations where all employees (not just Bartz) exercise their stock options and owe taxes, says Yahoo! requires them to pay the tax bill. This can be done by selling a portion of their exercised stock options or paying "cash or check" out of their own pocket. This latter option is exactly what I argued Bartz should have done -- from a leadership perspective -- with respect to her "makeup grant."

My comments about Bartz' stock sales and her egregious pay package, which was approved by Yahoo!'s compensation committee in January, have been neither inaccurate nor misleading. From a shareholder's perspective, Bartz shouldn't have sold these shares in order to pay taxes on them. To demonstrate her belief in the long-term value of the shares, she should have paid the tax bill herself.

The group deserving the most blame in this compensation debate is, of course, Yahoo!'s compensation committee, which signed off on Bartz's employment contract. The committee is chaired by Art Kern and has members Ron Burkle and Frank Biondi, Carl Icahn's right-hand man. They should be ashamed of the following aspects of Bartz's employment agreement:

1. If Bartz sticks around for four years and maxes out her possible annual bonuses and if Yahoo!'s stock price trades for more than $25 for 20 consecutive trading days before February 2016 -- seven years from now -- she will receive a total compensation package for her four years of work of $187 million. Although Yahoo!'s stock was trading around $12 when she took the job at the start of this year, is it really that much of a "stretch goal" for Bartz to get Yahoo!'s stock above $25 for 20 straight trading days in the next seven years? After all, getting the stock back to $25 would bring it to a level that's still 20% less than what Microsoft(MSFT Quote) offered to pay for the whole company 18 months ago. This would be a lot of money for a relatively low hurdle. I'm all for executives making money for performance, but not easy money.
2. They gave Bartz a $10 million "makeup grant" in cash and stock for options she left on the table at Autodesk when she signed her Yahoo! employment contract in January. However, according to SEC filings, Bartz's remaining Autodesk options were only worth $3.3 million at that time. Why did Yahoo!'s compensation committee triple the size of the "makeup grant"?
3. When Bartz is getting a potential $187 million for getting Yahoo!'s stock back to $5 less than Microsoft's buyout offer, isn't Bartz being sufficiently "made up" for the Autodesk options she left behind? Does she need a "makeup grant" on top of all her other compensation? Most reasonable executives would conclude that getting $187 million was better than $3.3 million. This "makeup grant" was padding and should never have been given in the first place.
4. Why did Yahoo! agree to pay the taxes on Bartz's RSUs related to her "makeup grant" that she receives this year? Bartz would have had to pay her taxes out of pocket on her $3.3 million of remaining Autodesk stock options. Why should Bartz now pay taxes for a $10 million grant out of that grant, and not out of her pocket?
5. Why did Yahoo! agree to pay Bartz "up to $140,000" for the financial advice she received as part of negotiating her employment contract? This was a great perk for her, but not for Yahoo!s shareholders. Yahoo!s public relations team or Bartz have yet to account for this slap in the face to shareholders.

A majority of Yahoo!'s board deserves to be replaced for so poorly negotiating the potential buyout of the company by Microsoft. All of the members of the compensation committee deserve to be replaced for overpaying Bartz's predecessor, Terry Semel, and for approving Bartz's contract.

But let's be clear: Bartz is no babe in the woods. She's been around the block negotiating employment contracts and knew exactly what she was demanding. Her compensation, perks and tax gross-up demands are excessive. She should immediately pay back Yahoo! shareholders the $140,000 for the high-priced advisers she used to negotiate her employment contract. She should also show her shareholders and employees that her heart is in the right place when it comes to this company's future.

To that end, I call on Bartz to spend $25 million of her own aftertax income on open-market Yahoo! stock purchases. She can keep her $187 million for getting the stock back to a 20% discount to the Microsoft offer, but let's see her put some of her money where her mouth is -- and actually at risk.

-- Written by Eric Jackson in Naples, Fla.

At the time of publication, Jackson's fund had a long position in MSFT.

Eric Jackson is founder and president of Ironfire Capital and the general partner and investment manager of Ironfire Capital US Fund LP and Ironfire Capital International Fund, Ltd.

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Carol Bartz Sold Another $1.3 Million of Yahoo! Stock Last Week

As predicted last month, when I first raised this issue, Yahoo! disclosed late Friday that Carol Bartz had sold another $1.3 million of Yahoo! stock at the end of September. This brings her total Yahoo! share sales for the year to $3.3 million.

When I first brought up this issue of how she and several other Yahoo! insiders had dumped shares over the past 2 years, Bartz went on CNBC and flat-out denied that she'd sold any shares.

She later reaffirmed at the press conference announcing Yahoo!'s new $100 million marketing campaign ("It's about Y!ou") that she'd never sold any shares.

I don't understand why she has decided to take this strident denial approach, when her SEC filings clearly show she disposed of (i.e., sold) her shares.

These sales all have to do with a "Make-Up Grant" Yahoo!'s board gave to Carol as part of her employment agreement she signed with the company. They agreed to give her $10 million worth of cash and Restricted Stock Units (basically Yahoo! shares) in blocks each quarter for her first year (2009) on the job to make her whole for the Autodesk stock she left on the table to take the Yahoo! CEO job.

No one has ever explained why Yahoo!'s board decided to give her a $10 million "make-up grant" when, according to SEC filings, she was only leaving Autodesk stock and stock options worth $3.3 million at the time she signed the deal.

Every quarter, when Carol gets her cash and stock from Yahoo! for this inflated "Make-Up Grant," she owes taxes on it. What is unusual about Carol compared to other senior executives who have been well-compensated through the years is that, rather than pay her tax bill herself, she has decided to dump part of her Yahoo! shares every quarter to pay those bills.

If I was an employee or shareholder, I would be disappointed that Bartz didn't want to keep every single share of Yahoo! stock she possibly could -- because I would think she anticipates that the price is going to go through the roof in the months and years to come.

How do I know Carol has enough cash in the bank to pay these tax bills herself? In 2007 alone, she exercised options at Autodesk worth $47 million. That's just that one year. Of course, she has enough.

It comes down to a question of leadership. When she had the choice to demonstrate her desire to keep all the Yahoo! stock that she negotiated so hard to get, she decided that she would rather keep her existing cash in the bank, than keep a few more hundred thousand shares of Yahoo! And then, to go on about how she never sold stock, and get Yahoo! PR to say this is done all the time -- when it's not, by real leaders -- that's bush league.

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Bartz's Pay Package Egregious

09/16/09 - 07:00 AM EDT

By Eric Jackson

YHOO , MSFT

Yahoo!(YHOO Quote) CEO Carol Bartz didn't get the "boatloads of cash" for her shareholders from Microsoft(MSFT Quote) as she vowed in May, but she'll take home a boatload of cash herself out of Yahoo! for her work in 2009.

A review of her total compensation plan reveals that Bartz is on track to make $20 million to $30 million this year in cash and stock (depending on if the share price rises 13% by December and stays there for the rest of the year or not); and $187 million for her first four years on the job, assuming the stock can get back to $25 by then.

In last week's Activist column, we shined a spotlight on the large amount of insider selling which has occurred at Yahoo! in the past two years (based on our study of the Securities and Exchange Commission filings leading to other media reports on this topic), including Bartz dumping $2 million in shares in March and June.

Since that column appeared, Bartz, Yahoo!'s PR SWAT team and Bartz' defenders have claimed that there was "no story here," as these were "routine" share sales made to pay taxes on generous Restricted Stock Unit (RSU) grants. Bartz went so far as to say "I didn't sell anything" on television and there have also been vague references to her shares being "reacquired" again. They have not - as the actual Form 4 SEC filings show. They state only "disposals" of $2 million in Yahoo! shares, which of course immediately lower the company's earnings per share.

Contrary to what any PR flak says, these kinds of tax-related share dumps when RSUs vest may be common at lower levels of the company, but they are not at the highest level, where executives have more than ample means to pay their taxes out of their own pockets. Bartz made $45 million in 2007 alone just from exercising her Autodesk(ADSK Quote) options, so she could have easily scratched together $2 million to pay the tax man if she'd wanted to hold on to her Yahoo! shares.

It turns out that, when you start to peel the onion around Bartz' CEO employment contract, there are many interesting details which Bartz would likely not want discussed. Prior to negotiating with Yahoo! for the top job, Bartz hired an unnamed financial advisory firm to help her. Later, when the deal was done, she got Yahoo!'s board to agree to Yahoo!'s shareholders paying "up to $150,000 for advisory fees" for her use of that savvy firm (which is outrageous and she should immediately reimburse Yahoo! shareholders for that with interest).

That negotiated agreement is a good one for Bartz, as this analysis shows. Making reasonably conservative assumptions, Bartz should get $187 million for her planned four years of work at Yahoo!

One small part of that agreement is something Yahoo! calls the "Make-Up Grant." Because of "forfeiture of the value of equity grants and post-employment medical coverage from" leaving her old executive chairman job at AutoDesk, which has one-fourth of the market cap of Yahoo!, Yahoo!'s board said she was due $10 million.

As part of that grant, she'll get $2.5 million in cash this year and 639,386 RSUs (or shares). The cash and shares vest at a rate of 25% quarterly in 2009. By the end of this year, those shares and cash will be worth about $12.5 million (not the $10 million grant date fair value; see this breakdown for more detail .

Yahoo! states later that they are providing "post-employment medical coverage for Bartz, her spouse and eligible dependents" on top of her grant, so that should not be linked to the value of the "Make-Up Grant." Therefore, the only thing to be made up for is the value of her unexercised AutoDesk equity options.

Yet when you go back and review the unexercised options she possessed in the 2008 AutoDesk proxy statement and the ones she subsequently exercised and sold in share sales through the rest of last year, I calculate Bartz' value of her unexercised equity grants at far less than $10 million.

On the date her Yahoo! employment agreement was announced (Jan. 15, 2009), AutoDesk was trading at $16.14. That means, her remaining 250,912 $11 strike price, her 36,420 $8 strike price, and her 993,056 $14.40 strike price unexercised options had a fair value on the date she took the Yahoo! top job of $3.3 million -- not $10mm.

This major "Make-Up Grant" discrepancy between what Yahoo! chose to award Bartz and what it appears -- according to her AutoDesk SEC filings -- she was in fact walking away from should be explained to shareholders immediately.

Setting this problem aside, Bartz -- like any other employee who gets RSUs -- has to pay tax on stock grants whenever she receives them. To pay the tax, Bartz must make a choice to write a check to the government from her personal account to cover this or sell part of these Yahoo! shares from the RSUs. In the first and second quarters, Bartz sold $2 million in Yahoo! stock to pay her taxes. It's very likely she'll do this again later this month and in December, when the rest of her "Make-Up Grant" shares vest.

Which brings us to the core problem: given her leadership role at Yahoo! and given her generous Yahoo! compensation and sizable wealth she's amassed from her time at AutoDesk, why would she dump Yahoo! shares instead of paying her tax bill herself? It sends the wrong message to employees and shareholders that she wouldn't be kicking and screaming to keep every last Yahoo! share in her possession.

I think there's a simple answer to this question: Carol Bartz is used to getting generous tax gross-ups from companies she works for and likely she (or her high-priced advisors) negotiated this in as part of the deal.

A tax gross-up is when an executive wants to receive a certain amount of compensation award or benefit but knows they'll have to pay taxes on it. Rather than pay that tax bill themselves, the executive asks the company to bump up the value of the award in the amount of any taxes they would otherwise have to pay. They end up getting the amount of money they want tax-free -- with taxes paid for by the company's shareholders rather than the executive.

For an example, let's go back to the 2008 AutoDesk proxy statement : "During fiscal 2007, Ms. Bartz's other compensation included post-employment health and dental benefits with an actuarially determined present value of $631,986 plus a $421,324 tax gross-up, and a Company gift for appreciation of years of service as CEO costing $67,500 plus an associated $33,889 tax gross-up." Have you ever heard of a gross-up on a gift for years of service?

Tax gross-ups are completely unacceptable and any well-governed company doesn't allow them. If you make money or a benefit of some kind, you should pay tax on that -- not the shareholders who gave you the benefit in the first place. To use one of Bartz' favorite words, tax gross-ups are stupid.

Bartz has clearly become used to tax gross-ups at AutoDesk and likely she or her high-priced advisors were thinking of this "Make-Up Grant" in the same way. They might have negotiated her $3.3mm fair value (as of mid-January 2009) unexercised AutoDesk options into a $10mm make-whole grant from Yahoo! That's a tax gross-up and then some.

Yahoo!'s compensation committee is to blame here. First, they pay Terry Semel over $570 million for his six years as CEO; then, they award Bartz a four-year $187 million pay package with up to $30 million in year one; then, they see their ineffective incentive plans lead to Yahoo! insiders selling $233 million in stock over the past two years versus insider purchases of only $103,000. Now, we learn of these discrepancies in the reasoning for different elements of Bartz' pay.

Where is Carl Icahn in all this? It turns out he was right at the negotiating table when all this went down. His colleague, Frank Biondi, has served on Yahoo!'s compensation committee since joining the board in September 2008. He directly oversaw the design and approval of Bartz' pay plan, which, in my view, wasn't in the shareholders' interests.

Of course, Bartz is at fault here too. She's gotten too used to high pay and tax gross-ups over the past few years -- both for herself and for CEOs she has socializes with.

Examine this table below for a comparison between the average annual total compensation for several popular tech CEOs vs. ones in Bartz' social network. Bartz doesn't suffer fools -- or CEOs who don't bank a lot of coin.

Popular Tech CEOs
CEO	Most Recent Avg. Annual Total Compensation
Eric Schmidt, Google	$500,000
Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com	$1.3mm
Steve Ballmer, Microsoft	$1.3mm
Steve Jobs, Apple	$1
Carol Bartz' Network of CEOs by Employment or Directorship
CEO	Most Recent Avg. Annual Total Compensation
John Chambers, Cisco	$11mm
Paul Otellini, Intel	$12mm
Dan Warmenhoven (Ex-CEO), NetApp	$5.7mm
Carl Bass, AutoDesk	$7mm
Carol Bartz (when Executive Chairman), AutoDesk	$4.5mm

Source: Company proxy statement SEC filings

Several things should be done to fix this mess:

• To avoid these questions about her commitment, Bartz should put some skin in the game. I think she should buy stock in Yahoo! that represents a significant chunk of her net worth. I would suggest at least half the value of her 2007 exercised options from AutoDesk or $23.5 million. This is not that large relative to the upside she should make from her 4 years at Yahoo!
• Bartz should immediately pay back the $150,000 to Yahoo! shareholders for her financial advisors who helped her negotiate a $187 million four-year deal for her.
• The Comp Committee (Art Kern, Ron Burkle, and Frank Biondi) should all resign off the board. Enough is enough.
• Someone else from Yahoo!'s board should explain why Bartz' $3.3 million in unexercised AutoDesk options had to be "made up" for by Yahoo! shareholders to the tune of $10 million.
• Yahoo!'s board should also provide much more transparency on Bartz' employment contract. For example, what cash flow and total shareholder returns targets does she exactly need to hit in order to receive her 4 times base salary annual bonus and other equity grants and options. If shareholders can't trust the details around the "Make-Up Grant," why should they trust the board's decisions on these other compensation matters?
• Yahoo! should change their comp plans going forward for all executives and directors so that base and target bonuses are quite low -- even lower than the often cited "peer group." How will they attract people? Load up the incentives on the back-end. And, instead of having those incentives be triggered by 20 consecutive trading days at a certain stock price level (as Bartz' are), require that the stock stay there for two years (with clawbacks in case it drops back done). This will eliminate short-termist thinking.
• Finally, Bartz should refrain from going on TV in the future saying she "didn't sell anything" after she has sold $2 million in shares.

At the time of publication, Jackson had a net long position in Microsoft.

Eric Jackson is founder and president of Ironfire Capital and the general partner and investment manager of Ironfire Capital US Fund LP and Ironfire Capital International Fund, Ltd.

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