Google to Pay CFO Porat More Than $70 Million

Google Inc said it would pay its new Chief Financial Officer, Ruth Porat, more than $70 million through a combination of restricted stock units and a biennial grant.

The company hired Morgan Stanley CFO Porat as its finance chief earlier this week, a sign it is aiming to rein in costs as it invests in new businesses such as self-driving cars and Internet-connected eyeglasses.

Porat's compensation package includes a grant of $25 million through restricted stock units, a $40 million biennial grant in 2016 and a special one-time $5 million sign-on bonus, Google said in a regulatory filing on Thursday.

Porat, who will join Google on May 26, will also get an annual base salary of $650,000. She earned a base salary of $1 million at Morgan Stanley for 2013, according to the bank's proxy filing. Her pay last year will be disclosed once the bank files its latest proxy.

Porat is the latest among a string of Wall Street executives to leave an industry that is increasingly regulated to move into the more free-wheeling technology sector, where fortunes can be built fast but businesses can also become irrelevant overnight.

Google paid its outgoing CFO Patrick Pichette, who announced his retirement earlier this month, $62.2 million for the three years through 2013, more than twice the $29.6 million Porat earned at Morgan Stanley, according to regulatory filings.

Mountain View, California-based Google said it would stop annual cash bonuses for senior vice presidents from next year and shift to a system that includes annual base salary and biennial equity grants.

Shares of Google closed at $563.64 on Thursday on the Nasdaq.

© Thomson Reuters 2015