Tech behemoth Google on Wednesday announced that it had approved a new equity award for Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai that ties more of his pay to performance.
The company also said that the board has recognised Pichai’s “strong performance” as CEO and added that the vesting of a significant portion of the award would depend on Alphabet’s total shareholder return relative to other S&P 100 companies.
Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc. said the award was tweaked to increase the performance stock units (PSUs) to 60 per cent from 43 per cent in 2019, while increasing the performance requirement for the payout.
According to Reuters, Pichai, who is given an equity award every three years, was granted two tranches of PSUs with a target value of $63 million each and was also given a grant of $84 million in the form of Alphabet’s restricted stock units.
As per a filing from 2020, Google disclosed Pichai’s annual salary to be at $2 million.
According to the IIFL Hurun India Rich List 2022, Pichai’s net worth fell 20 per cent to Rs 5,300 crore, but he ranks amongst the top ten richest professional managers on the list.
Before that, in 2018, Pichai turned down a similar fresh grant of stock options, saying he was already paid “generously”.
Meanwhile, Pichai was in India earlier this week and was in conversation with IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw. The duo discussed tech regulations in the country, ‘Make in India’, and more.
Pichai was fulsome in praise for the India export story. “There is an incredible opportunity given a huge talent that exists. For Google, we have already seen UPI and Gpay move to other countries. In the case of AI, we now have flood forecasting techniques that came out of India before moving to Bangladesh,” he said. The instances of India leapfrogging and then making it a way to export that success story is a trend he expects to increase.
