However, the 273,328 shares will vest in quarterly phases through 2019 if he remains on the job, which means that he won’t be able to cash these shares all in at once. Google may see the award as fair value for the work Pichai has done for the company over the years, as he took charge of its Android, Chrome and search business arms over the years, bringing Google nothing but success. According to Credit Suisse, the new shares put the value of Pichai’s Alphabet holdings at approximately $650 million. Bloomberg reports that according to its data, the award is the biggest ever given to a Google executive officer. It is also Pichai’s first award since he took over as CEO in August 2015. The financial publication also notes the Alphabet filing revealed the company awarded $42.8 million in restricted stock to Diane Greene, former CEO of VMware, who is in charge of cloud business since November. Earlier this month, Alphabet became the most valuable firm in the United States surpassing Apple, with its latest reports showing that the company broke quarterly profit forecasts on Monday, hitting consolidated revenue of $21.33 billion (£15bn) for the financial quarter ending December 31, an 18 percent increase from the $18.10 billion (£12.5bn) reported a year earlier. Alphabet’s CFO Ruth Porat was handed shares worth $38 million which is on top of the $30 million signing bonus she received when she was poached away from Morgan Stanley last year.
