Google's top senior executives get a hefty pay hike
Tech giant Google is giving four of its top-most senior executives a significant pay hike, raising their base salaries from $650,000 to $1 million, IANS reported today citing a regulatory filing.
A latest company filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) disclosed the new pay packages for chief financial officer Ruth Porat, senior vice-president Prabhakar Raghavan (in charge of Google search), senior vice-president and chief business officer Philipp Schindler, and Kent Walker, president of global affairs and chief legal officer.
"Effective January 2022, the base salaries of each of Porat, Raghavan, Schindler, and Walker will be increased from $650,000 to $1,000,000," Google said.
The pay hike for top executives came after Frank Wagner, Google’s vice president of compensation, last month said the tech giant would not automatically adjust all employees' salaries to account for inflation.
"We don't have any plans to do any type of across-the-board type adjustment," Wagner was quoted as saying in a CNBC report last month.
"Inflation does seem to be top of mind for a lot of folks, and I think one of the reasons is that people are pretty eager to get their compensation awards," replied Wagner to a question by Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai. However, he went on to say that while Google is trying to pay competitively, it won’t introduce company-wide adjustments for inflation.
The four executives are eligible to "participate in a maximum $2,000,000 annual bonus programme, based on contributions to Google's performance against social and environmental goals for 2022."
Each person has also been granted stock awards with target values in millions of dollars.
Porat will be granted one tranche of performance stock units ("PSUs") with a target value of $5,000,000, and one tranche of restricted stock units ("GSUs") of $18,000,000.
Raghavan will be granted one tranche of PSUs with a target value of $12,000,000, and one tranche of GSUs in the amount of $23,000,000, according to the filing.
While Schindler will be granted one tranche of PSUs with a target value of $12,000,000, and one tranche of GSUs in the amount of $23,000,000, Walker will be granted one tranche of PSUs with a target value of $5,000,000, and one tranche of GSUs in the amount of $18,000,000.
Google’s parent Alphabet has more than 150,000 full-time employees globally, and has seen its revenue and stock soar to record levels over the last year.