Court Document Reveals Details of Arianna's AOL Windfall
So it was nowhere near $100 million, the loosely reported territory that had many unpaid Huffington Post bloggers seeing red at the time of the site’s acquisition by AOL. Still, for Arianna Huffington, the February 2011 transaction amounted to some very nice Brentwood trickle-down.
Per a nine-page internal AOL document filed in court and obtained by The Smoking Gun, Huffington scored around $21 million when AOL purchased HuffPo. Eighteen million in cash and the rest in the form of AOL stock options with a 20-month vesting period:
Additionally, her employment agreement – which was then being negotiated – called for Huffington to receive another $3 million in equity grants (stock options and restricted stock units)…
Her share amounted to less than seven percent of the sales price (and likely was less than what was earned by several of the site’s financial backers, like SoftBank Partners and Alan Patricof’s Greycroft Partners).
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