Global Tax 50 2015: Marissa Mayer

International Tax Review is part of Legal Benchmarking Limited, 1-2 Paris Garden, London, SE1 8ND

Copyright © Legal Benchmarking Limited and its affiliated companies 2025

Accessibility | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Modern Slavery Statement

Global Tax 50 2015: Marissa Mayer

CEO, Yahoo

Marissa Mayer

Marissa Mayer is a new entry this year

$19 billion. That is what one analyst estimated could have been the tax cost of Yahoo's spin-off of its $31 billion stake in Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce company. No doubt Marissa Mayer, the chief executive officer of Yahoo, would prefer if she did not grab so many headlines. It would allow her to get on with the job of securing the future of one of the pioneering companies of the early internet. But she is in this list because, for what seemed like the whole of 2015, analysts and the business media discussed her plans for the Alibaba transaction. When the Internal Revenue Service declined to state categorically that it would treat the transaction as tax-free, it was back to the drawing board for Mayer and her tax advisers, believed to be Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom, and they came up with a structure called a reverse spin, which will see the company's core internet business, including a large stake in Yahoo Japan being spun off and the Alibaba stake retained. The transaction is expected to take most of 2016 to complete.

The now-shelved Alibaba deal was another example of the increasing trend for tax to be front-and-centre of the biggest corporate transactions. For example, Pfizer's takeover of Allergan hinged on how to achieve the tax inversion that would allow the new company to become tax resident in Ireland, where the corporate tax rate is 12.5%, rather than the US, where it is more than 20 percentage points higher. And GE said tax was a "catalyst" in its decision earlier this year to move its headquarters from Stamford, Connecticut to Boston, Massachussetts.

The Global Tax 50 2015

View the full list and introduction

The top 10 • Ranked in order of influence

1. Margrethe Vestager

2. Pascal Saint-Amans

3. Wang Jun

4. Arun Jaitley

5. Marissa Mayer

6. Will Morris

7. Ian Read

8. Pierre Moscovici

9. Donato Raponi

10. Global Alliance for Tax Justice

The remaining 40 • In alphabetic order

Brigitte Alepin

Andrus Ansip

Tamara Ashford

Mohammed Amine Baina

Piet Battiau

Elise Bean

Monica Bhatia

David Bradbury

Winnie Byanyima

Mauricio Cardenas

Allison Christians

Rita de la Feria

Marlies de Ruiter

Judith Freedman

Meg Hillier

Vanessa Houlder

Kim Jacinto-Henares

Eva Joly

Chris Jordan

Jean-Claude Juncker

Alain Lamassoure

Juliane Kokott

Armando Lara Yaffar

Liao Tizhong

Paige Marvel

Angela Merkel

Zach Mider

Richard Murphy

George Osborne

Achim Pross

Akhilesh Ranjan

Alan Robertson

Paul Ryan

Tove Maria Ryding

Magdalena Sepulveda Carmona

Lee Sheppard

Parthasarathi Shome

Robert Stack

Mike Williams

Ya-wen Yang

more across site & shared bottom lb ros

More from across our site

It’s not all doom and gloom for the firm as it seeks to bounce back from the tax leaks controversy, but transparency and trust are still major issues
A tax lawyer accused the firm’s Washington DC head of sexual assault; in other news, e-invoicing will reportedly generate an additional €111 million in VAT revenue
A lack of technical tax knowledge among advisers will render AI use ineffective, ITR’s AI in Tax Forum also heard
Advisers say Spanish taxpayers will have to reexamine how they finance themselves following TP litigation that went all the way to the country's Supreme Court
AI automation in the tax agency has supported around 13 million transactions in 2024/25 and freed up the equivalent of around 400 full-time staff, David Johnson said
Shelley compares tax law to philosophy, shares best practices to get the most out of the working day, and reveals his alternate life as a teacher in Japan
Partners Sebastian Diehl and Martin Seevers reveal why the firm set up in London and discuss the city’s growing demand for German legal expertise
Tax advisers who aren’t alive to clients’ AI needs risk falling behind, even though the technology is not a miracle cure just yet
Awards
The ‘big four’ firm scooped over 60 honours at a lively ceremony held at The Londoner hotel, including both EMEA and APAC Tax Advisory Firm of the Year
The firms received fees for referring clients to the avoidance scheme, HMRC said; in other news, Freshfields’ former tax head has lost his fraud conviction appeal
Gift this article