Yahoo Gives Fired Exec $58 Million: Henrique De Castro Gets Largest Golden Parachute Ever

Maybe Henrique de Castro was only Yahoo Inc.’s (NASDAQ:YHOO) chief operating officer for just 15 short months, but he just walked away with a severance package worth a cool $58 million, one of the largest golden parachute's in recent memory.

Yahoo made the disclosure in a regulatory filing on Wednesday after it fired de Castro in January when CEO Marissa Mayer concluded that he wasn't the right person to help revive its lackluster ad growth. De Castro, who had been in charge of ad sales, didn't receive a 2013 bonus, the company said in the filing.

Castro's severance package is more than double Mayer's own compensation package last year, which was valued at $24.9 million, the Associated Press reports. The Sunnyvale, Calif., company's board said that most of de Castro's severance pay was related to expenses that it incurred to lure him away from Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG), to make up for some of the stock awards that he relinquished by leaving Google.

Although Yahoo had previously announced that de Castro would receive an exit payout, it didn't disclose the amount until Wednesday.

A sharp rise in the value of Yahoo shares during de Castro's tenure, which most analysts largely attributed to its 24 percent stake in China's Alibaba Group, significantly boosted the amount of his severance package, which would have been valued at about $17 million in 2012. The Chinese e-commerce company is planning an initial public stock offering that could value the company at $200 billion.

Yahoo's shares rose about 6 percent on Wednesday after its quarterly earnings beat Wall Street expectations. At the time, the company said that it had been able to slow its decline in advertising revenue, but it still lags the overall Internet market, AP said.

De Castro last year received a base salary of $600,000, while stock grants and options raised his total compensation package to about $11 million.