In fact, Yahoo itself is worth less than nothing, but its shares in Alibaba are worth more than its own value plus Alibaba's shares.

yahoo + alibaba < alibaba

So, they're splitting off the Alibaba shares as a starting point. Next, they will be splitting off other pieces, getting rid of unneeded staff (lots and lots of them) and eventually fold the whole thing, because let's admit it: Who the hell needs Yahoo?

Verizon completes its $4.48 billion acquisition of Yahoo; Marissa Mayer leaves with $23 million

Marissa only got a $23-million commission out of this. That's just 0.5%! If a thing like that happened to me, seriously, I would stab somebody in the back. Would you swallow that kind of insult?

$23 mil or ? Hmmmm. I choose $23 mil.

Marissa is a very talented woman. She will have no problems furthering her career if she chooses .
Many options open to her.

nobody here is in the board of directors of yahoo, so we may never know whats the deal, maybe she was promised a lot more but she gotten a shitty deal instead, some CEO sign on with performance clause worked into their contract, and performance can mean many things to many boards, some think that selling the company for a profit is performance, all in all yahoo is a dying company shadowed by google and such, so whatever deal she has gotten out this sunset company might be agreeable to the board as "exceptional", profit is all board ever considered, nothing more nothing less