Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt and its thirty-something founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin will again toss themselves a $1 annual salary this year. Their salary compensation has been a single greenback ever since Google went public in 2004.
The three will also forgo the bonuses and stock awards that are given to many of the search giant's 20,000 employees. But the beggar bags should not go out just yet.
It is a mostly symbolic move, however; the triumvirate that runs Google still owns a substantial portion of the company's stock. In fact, both Brin and Page own 29 million shares each. Even as the value of the stock holdings held by Brin, Page and Schmidt sank by a whopping $26 billion last year, the three are far from hitting the soup kitchens.
Without a salary, bonus or stock awards, the executives count on their actual stock holdings for income. With Google shares sitting at $347 this morning, the sale of just a few thousand shares would bring in almost $700,000. Even in California, that'll buy at least a month of rent payments and food -- possibly even more.
Should other companies, whose founders and CEOs hold tens of millions of shares, adopt a similar stance like Google? With executive compensation, outlandish bonuses and other forms of direct compensation under such a microscope in this market, perhaps so. A number of other CEOs took home a $1 salary in 2008 (Jerry Yang and Steve Jobs are two examples), and then there are the finance company CEOs who seem to have gone in the opposite direction, pocketing as many millions as possible while placating a board where fiduciary duty isn't even a defined term.
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