Google Inc., fresh off announcing a management shake-up, will give a $100 million equity award to outgoing Chief Executive Eric Schmidt, who in April will be succeeded by company co-founder Larry Page.
Poornima Gupta, a spokeswoman for Google, confirmed on Saturday that it was the first such award for Mr. Schmidt since he joined the company in 2001. It includes stock and options. She declined to comment further.
Other top Google executives have periodically received smaller equity awards.
The company on Thursday said Mr. Schmidt would become executive chairman to work on external matters such as partnerships and government relationships. Messrs. Schmidt and Page said the moves are intended to speed up decision-making at the top of the Internet giant, which on Thursday posted strong fourth-quarter results and said it generated more than $29 billion in 2010.
Bloomberg reported on the award to Mr. Schmidt late Friday.
Mr. Schmidt oversaw a period of tremendous growth as chief executive for the past decade, as Google turned into a Web search-engine powerhouse with a complementary search-ad business. The company has since expanded to graphical and video ads, as well as developing operating systems for mobile devices and laptop computers, among other things.
On Thursday, Mr. Schmidt filed paperwork to sell company shares currently valued at $335 million this year, his first such sale in more than three years.
He currently owns 9.2 million Google shares, which are valued at nearly $5.8 billion and represent 9.6% of the company's voting power, according to the filing. When the sale is completed this year, the voting power would fall to 9.1%.
Below is todays conversion in some popular world currencies and in any currency it is a lot of money
$100,000,000.00 USD =
Euro € 73,626,861.57
British Pound £ 62,496,092.41
Japanese Yen ¥ 8,258,999,633.79
China Yuan Renminbi Y 658,409,976.96
Dutch Guilder The Netherlands ƒ 162,252,251.11
Hong Kong Dollar $ 779,120,016.10
South Korean Won ₩ 111,809,997,558.59
