India-born Sundar Pichai is likely highest paid CEO in US

Head of Alphabet’s largest division made nearly $200 million in 2016, twice as much as any CEO tracked in the past two years.

Houston, April 30: Google's India-born CEO Sundar Pichai, has been awarded $199m worth of shares, making him the highest paid chief executive in the US.

Pichai, who became Google's CEO in October following its reorganisation into holding company Alphabet, was handed 273,328 shares, according to a company filing, worth $199m when they were awarded.

In its annual proxy statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission, filed Friday, Alphabet GOOGL, +3.71% GOOG, +3.63% revealed that Pichai was awarded $198.7 million in Alphabet stock in 2016, more than twice as much as any CEO of a publicly traded company tracked in the last two years.

Pichai, received a salary of US $650,000 last year, slightly less than the US $652,500 he earned in 2015.

Under Pichai, Google has boosted sales from its core advertising and YouTube business, while also investing in machine learning, hardware and cloud computing, the report said.

In 2016, Google unveiled new smartphones, a virtual reality headset, a router, and a voice controlled smart speaker. These efforts have started to pay off for the company.

Google's other revenues, a category that includes hardware and cloud services, hit nearly US $3.1 billion in the most recent quarter, a gain of about 50 per cent from the same quarter a year earlier.

Alphabet's stock has soared this year, pushing it above a US $600 billion market cap this week for the first time, the report said.

PTI