Sundar Pichai to get $240 Mn in performance-based stock awards

The recently appointed CEO of Alphabet Inc, Sundar Pichai, will be receiving about $240 Mn in performance-based stock awards over a period of three years, as per media reports. This amount happens to be the highest to have ever been promised to any other executive of the search engine giant. 

The performance-based stock awards of $240 Mn are in addition to Pichai’s take home annual salary of $2 Mn which he would start drawing from the beginning of 2020. Last year, Larry Page drew a $1 salary when he was the CEO. 

Earlier this month, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin stepped down as the leaders of the internet mammoth that they had founded about two decades ago. Now, Pichai is the Chief of Google as well as the CEO of the parent company, Alphabet Inc. 

As the face of Google and Alphabet, Pichai has worked with the company for about 15 years and took the reins as Google’s chief in 2015 when he drew an annual salary of $652,500. In 2016, he received about $199 Mn in stock awards and thus his earnings rose exponentially. 

Pichai earned about $1.9 Mn in 2018, a major part of the costs being his security and personal use of aircraft. In 2018, his base salary was $650,000. 

Most popular for making Google chrome browser successful, Pichai was also heralded as a suitable person to follow in the footsteps of Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer, prior to Satya Nadella taking up the role in 2014.