De Castro, the first major hire by Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Canned But Walks with Cash!

Indeed it will be curious to see how CEO Mayer weathers this storm, particularly as De Castro was her hire, according to reports! Business Insider reports the following: Yahoo COO Henrique de Castro is leaving Yahoo, effective January 16, according to Yahoo.

De Castro was the first major hire by Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer.

He was lured to Yahoo from Google with a four-year $62 million pay package. He was at Yahoo for only a little over a year, but it looks like he’s still going to collect ~$60 million.

His job at Yahoo was to fix the company’s relationship with big agencies to get Yahoo’s ad business cranking again. From the moment he was hired, skeptics warned that he wasn’t going to work out.

An ex-senior Googler told us at the time: “[Henrique] is very smart, but he has a difficult personality; both his teams and his clients dislike him.”