Hot Off the Wire – AT&T CEO’s pay soars to $20.2M; Analyst downgrades Yahoo; Motorola adds Bing to smartphones
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A roundup of the latest high-tech news from The Associated Press
• AT&T’s CEO compensation jumps by 33 percent
NEW YORK — The frugality of the recession eased in the 2009 pay package for AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) CEO Randall Stephenson, who resumed taking a bonus and saw his compensation rise by one-third to $20.2 million, according to Associated Press calculations on a regulatory filing Thursday.
Stephenson declined a bonus in 2008 because of the recession and the job cuts the telecommunications company was making. Last year Stephenson accepted a bonus of $5.85 million, according to the filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
AT&T said Stephenson received a $1.45 million salary in 2009, a 2 percent increase over 2008.
Most of his compensation was in the form of options and performance-based stock incentives valued at $12.1 million.
He accumulated more than $864,000 in perks, including nearly $216,000 in club memberships and $200,000 in life insurance premiums. He also got $140,576 in "tax gross-ups," which compensate for the taxes he pays on other benefits. However, the company said it is eliminating such gross-ups for its executives this year.
The Associated Press' calculations of total pay includes salary, bonus, incentives, perks, above-market returns on deferred compensation and the estimated value of stock options and awards granted during the year. The calculations exclude changes in the present value of pension benefits, and they sometimes differ from the totals companies list in the summary compensation table of proxy statements filed with the SEC.
In 2008, Stephenson's pay was $15 million, according to calculations by the AP. In 2007, his first year as CEO, he earned $18 million.
• Analyst downgrades Yahoo on search share concerns
SAN FRANCISCO — A Benchmark Co. analyst downgraded share of Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO) Thursday, noting issues like better-scaled competitors grabbing a bigger share of the search market and increasing competition in display advertising.
In a note to clients, Benchmark analyst Clayton Moran cut his rating to "Hold" from "Buy," saying Yahoo has lost share in the domestic search market, and as of February it was down about 4 percent year over year to 16.8 percent of the market.
While he expects Yahoo's search share losses to slow down, he's still concerned about the company's segment of the market as Bing, Microsoft's upgraded search engine, gains popularity. He also thinks Google's share of the market will climb as consumers perform more searches on mobile devices — a number of which now run Google's Android operating software.
Moran also said that while the reach of Yahoo's display advertising business has helped the company as the online ad market improves, its growth could be hampered over time by the growth of specialized sites like Facebook.
• Motorola to add Microsoft's Bing to smart phones
LIBERTYVILLE, Ill. — Motorola Inc. said Thursday that it will add Microsoft Corp.'s Bing search and map functions to its smart phones that use Google Inc.'s Android operating software.
Motorola said it start by rolling out the services on smart phones in China this quarter.
The company will include a Bing bookmark on the phones' mobile browsers and a new search "widget," or mini application, that includes Bing.
Financial details of the agreement with Microsoft were not disclosed.
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