Google is giving outgoing chief executive officer Eric Schmidt a $100 million equity award as he steps down and hands the job over to co-founder Larry Page, Bloomberg reports.
This is Schmidt’s first such award, which he will receive in stock and stock options on February 2, 2011 and will vest over four years. Both Schmidt and Page, along with the co-founder Sergey Bring, have kept their salaries at $1 for several years, although all three own controlling shares in Google.
Citing compensation experts and compensation data, The Wall Street Journal said Schmidt’s “equity award is highly unusual.” These awards, the WSJ says, are typically given to new CEOs. It’s also unusual because this is the largest such award in terms of grant-value dollars for a sitting CEO since Motorola gave a grant valued $103 million to Sanjay Jha in August 2008, who served as the company’s CEO at the time.
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