It's kind of b/s though to assume that just because a company does better it's all due to the CEO.
Re:Marissa Mayer Employment Offer Letter
by eli_gottlieb on Saturday July 21, 2012 @12:25PM
(#4275081)
Anything above a 5% jump in Yahoo!'s stock price during Mayer's tenure would equate to $1billion increase in Yahoo!'s market cap.
But that's not actually value generated. It's value captured from the grand casino of the stock markets. Yahoo! itself is not holding 1 billion more dollars at the end; Yahoo! shareholders are collectively, all tens of thousands of them, holding 1 billion in potential gains should they all sell their stock in some way that won't crash the stock price from the sudden sell-off.
One way to answer your question, would be to say: It seems the shareholders of Yahoo! are willing to pay a fair commission to someone in exchange for an increase in the value of their stock (with optimism that Mayer's leadership will result directly in this happening).