Google has announced that its choice for a new Chief Financial Officer, soon-to-be ex-Morgan Stanley employee Ruth Porat, will effectively occupy the position on May 26th and will be paid about $70 million over the next two years in stock units, grants and bonuses.
The new Google CFO will have a base salary of $650.000 per year, but on top of this she will receive $25 million in restricted stock units grants, another $40 million grant in 2016 and a $5 million signature bonus. In comparison, regulatory fillings from Morgan Stanley show that she has earned about $30 million in her last three years with the Manhattan company.
Porat had occupied the positions of Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President at financial services giant Morgan Stanley since January 2010, after working her way throughout the ranks of the company since 1987. At one point in 2013, heavy rumors pointed towards President Barack Obama nominating her to be the next Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, but later reports stated she had asked the White House on her own to remove her from consideration for the position, as she wanted to continue to work for Morgan Stanley.
This move comes after the previous Google CFO, Patrick Pichette, announced his retirement from the company earlier this month in an open letter posted on Google Plus. Pichette invoked overall tiredness, satisfaction with his career’s achievements and desire to spend more time with his wife as the reasons for his departure. He also stated at the time that he will help the company in transitioning the next CFO into the role.
Porat joins Google at a rather tumultuous time for the Silicon Valley giant, after an accidentally leaked Federal Trade Committee antitrust report in 2013 stated that the company had used content from rival companies into its own services, and also threatened some of them with exclusion from their search engine. Google was at that point under investigation by the FTC for alleged anticompetitive business practices, which ultimately ended in the company’s favor.
Image Source: Mashable
George Kafantaris says
Exorbitant executive salaries spotlight the ugly side of capitalism. Nor can the free market fix this because unconscionable salaries are proof of the limited reach of the market into the cozy world of the corporate board of directors. Since nobody is even looking for a fix anymore, courts should allow more shareholder derivative suits to rattle the cage of these self-perpetuating boards.