昔日榜单上的常客今年不见了踪影，雅虎CEO到底经历了什么？

从今年“最具影响力的商界女性”榜单中消失的名字中，知名度最高的或许要数梅丽莎·梅耶。梅耶从2008年便一直榜上有名，先是作为谷歌（Google）的高管，后来从2012年起，担任雅虎（Yahoo）总裁兼CEO。

要说现年41岁的梅耶经历了动荡的一年，都是保守的说法。2015年，雅虎的收入和利润损失惨重，梅耶的复兴战略也越来越难以令人信服，因此激进投资者Starboard Value在去年晚些时候，发起了针对梅耶和雅虎董事会的行动，导致她对雅虎的未来计划彻底破产，公司也四分五裂。

今年一月份公布的雅虎2015年第四季度业绩，成为压死骆驼的最后一根稻草：这家困难重重的公司，在2015年后三个季度的亏损达到令人震惊的44亿美元。

公平的说，在2012年，梅耶离开老东家谷歌前往雅虎担任最高领导人时，她所接手的已经不是一家健康的公司。2012年7月，她在宣布新职位之后，曾对《财富》杂志的帕蒂·塞勒斯表示：“我有许多工作要做。”

但梅耶的雅虎复兴计划需要大量的资本，这不能让华尔街满意。尽管经过多轮裁员，雅虎还是通过收购增加了近3,000名员工，虽然有许多创业者后来都离开了公司。其中价格最高的一笔交易是2013年，雅虎以10亿美元的价格收购博客网站Tumblr——今年早些时候，雅虎被迫将该网站减记4.82亿美元。雅虎还以超过1.6亿美元收购了购物网站Polyvore，许多人批评该笔交易的估值过高。

引发投资者不满的支出不止这些。雅虎支付了2,000万美元，购买了美国职业橄榄球联盟首次仅面向流媒体的比赛直播权，结果被外界视为是一场灾难。另有报道称，雅虎在2014年12月在一场节日聚会上花费了700万美元，并为赞助名人和时尚界人士的年度聚会Met Ball，投入了300万美元。梅耶称某些支出数据都是“厚颜无耻的假话”，但在华尔街眼中，她已经一败涂地。

7月，梅耶以48.3亿美元现金的价格，将雅虎的核心互联网资产出售给了威瑞（Verizon ）森，这一价格与更高的估算价格相去甚远。有人估算，雅虎的估值可达到80亿美元。雅虎374亿美元的市值中，多数来自其持有的中国在线商务公司阿里巴巴（Alibaba）15%的股份，以及日本雅虎（Yahoo Japan）35%的股份，这些股份并未包含在交易当中。目前尚无法确定，2017年初，雅虎与威瑞森的交易完成之后，这些资产将面临怎样的命运。

那么，梅耶接下来要怎么做？她曾表示，自己将继续留在雅虎，直到出售交易结束，但之后她是否会继续留在威瑞森就不得而知了。她可能会选择离开，成为一名风险投资人，或者创建自己的公司，雅虎的新东家也有可能决定将她解雇。无论如何，梅耶都会得到一笔非常丰厚的补偿金：预计她可以得到约5,500万美元的巨额补偿。但无论如何，可以肯定的是，她未来的路会更不好走。（财富中文网）

译者：刘进龙/汪皓

Perhaps the most high-profile name to vanish from this year’s Most Powerful Women list is that of Marissa Mayer. Mayer has been a staple of the Fortune list since 2008, first as a Google exec and then, starting in 2012, as president and CEO of Yahoo.

To say that Mayer, now 41, has had a tumultuous year is an understatement. Amid massive revenue and income losses in 2015—and a turnaround strategy that was becoming harder and harder to defend—activist investor Starboard Value launched a campaign against Mayer and Yahoo’s board late last year, pushing to scrap her future plans for Yahoo and disband the company.

The company’s 2015 fourth quarter numbers, reported in January, drove the proverbial nail into Yahoo’s coffin: The struggling company reported a staggering $4.4 billion in losses for the last three months of 2015.

To be fair, Mayer wasn’t handed a healthy company back in 2012 when she left her former employer,Google, for the top spot at Yahoo. As she told Fortune‘s Pattie Sellers after her new job was announced in July 2012, “there’s a lot of work to do.”

But Mayer’s plan for a Yahoo turnaround required capital—a lot of capital—which didn’t please Wall Street. Despite multiple rounds of layoffs, Yahoo added nearly 3,000 workers through acquisitions, though many of these entrepreneurs have since left the company. One of the priciest deals was the acquisition of Tumblr, the blogging site it bought for $1 billion in 2013—$482 million of which Yahoo was forced to write down earlier this year. Yahoo also bought shopping site Polyvore for more than $160 million, a deal many criticized for being overvalued.

And those aren’t the only costs that raised investors’ eyebrows. Yahoo paid $20 million for the rights to the National Football League’s first streaming-only game broadcast, which was deemed a disaster. The companyreportedly spent $7 million on a holiday party in December 2014, and $3 million to sponsor the Met Ball, an annual gathering of celebrities and fashion industry insiders. Mayer called some of these cost figures “blatant falsehoods,” but in Wall Street’s eyes, she was done.

In July, Mayer inked a deal to sell the company’s core internet assets to Verizon for $4.83 billion in cash, a far cry from some of the loftier estimates, which pegged Yahoo’s value at up to $8 billion. Most of Yahoo’s $37.4 billion market value comes from its 15% stake in Chinese online commerce company Alibaba and 35% stake in Yahoo Japan, neither of which are included in the deal. It’s unclear what will happen with these assets once the deal with Verizon closes in early 2017.

So what’s next for Mayer? She has said that she will remain with Yahoo through the end of the sale process, but whether or not she will then stay on at Verizon is an open question. She might choose to leave—perhaps to become a VC or start her own company—or Yahoo’s new owner may decide to send her packing. Either way, Mayer would walk away a very well compensated woman: Her golden parachute has been estimated at roughly $55 million. There are definitely worse ways to go.