Executive Pay
Alphabet / Google

Google CEO Pichai Set to Cash In $380 Million Award This Week ... He received restricted shares in 2014, before his promotion ... Sundar Pichai got two more nine-figure stock grants since then

Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

Google CEO Pichai Set to Cash In $380 Million Award This Week He received restricted shares in 2014, before his promotion Sundar Pichai got two more nine-figure stock grants since then

Google Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai is about to have a very big week.

On Wednesday, an award of 353,939 restricted shares he received before a promotion in 2014 will vest. At the end of last week, the grant was worth about $380 million, making it one of the largest single payouts to a public company executive in recent years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.


Sundar PichaiPhotographer: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg

Pichai, 45, who has led Alphabet Inc.’s Google since 2015, received the shares before his promotion to senior vice president of products a year earlier, when he took over many of co-founder Larry Page’s responsibilities. The award swelled in value as Alphabet’s stock surged 90 percent since the grant date, compared with a 39 percent advance of the S&P 500. He has received two more nine-figure stock grants since then. The company has yet to disclose Pichai’s compensation for 2017.

Winnie King, a spokeswoman for the Mountain View, California-based company, declined to comment.

In 2016, CEOs of S&P 500 companies realized an average of $16.2 million from shares that vested or exercising stock options, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Other tech executives have received hefty payouts in the past. Facebook Inc.’s Mark Zuckerberg reaped $2.28 billion when he exercised 60 million options as part of the company’s initial public offering in August 2012. Months later, restricted shares worth $822 million held by his deputy Sheryl Sandberg fully vested.

In 2016, Tesla Inc.’s Elon Musk collected $1.34 billion after exercising 6.71 million options that were close to expiring, in part to cover a $593 million tax bill. That same year, Monster Beverage Corp.’s two top executives took in a combined $598 million thanks to the stock rising an average of 30 percent a year for a decade.

Alphabet, which is set to report first-quarter results after U.S. markets close Monday, slid 0.3 percent to $1,073.64 at 10:05 a.m. in New York, paring this year’s advance to 2.1 percent.

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— With assistance by Alicia Ritcey, Mark Bergen, and Steven Crabill