Greg Coleman's Previous Ousting: How He Did Financially
This story was written by Rory Maher.
Greg Coleman's ouster at Platform-A (NYSE: TWX) isn't the first time he has been pushed out of a top executive job. Flashback to 2007 and Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO), where he was head of ad sales. Just a couple of months after Sue Decker took over as president, she replaced him with Hilary Schneider. Coleman ran ad sales at Yahoo for about six years, over which time ad revenues leapt from $600 million to more than $6 billion, according to a letter sent by Decker to the staff announcing his departure. But for all that work, Coleman amassed strikingly little wealth from his tenure, at least compared with his internet peers at places like Google (NSDQ: GOOG) or Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) and even private companies like YouTube or Skype. Many people at those companies made tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars.
When Coleman was hired in 2001 he got 650,000 options and earned another 150,000-plus options over the next few years. But only half of his options were ever worth anything, as Yahoo's stock price went from around $6 to only about $23 (adjusted for a stock split) over those six years, and has since dropped to around $14. He did manage to cash out nearly $2 million worth of options while employed there, and still holds options worth over a million dollars about $2.5 million. He earned about a million a year in salary and bonuses, according to SEC filings.
By Rory Maher