Dive Brief:
- Anat Ashkenazi, who is preparing to take the finance reins of Google parent Alphabet, will receive an annual base salary of $1 million and a one-time sign-on bonus of $9.9 million in her new role, the tech giant said in a Friday securities filing.
- The disclosure came two days after Alphabet announced that Ashkenazi will be succeeding its current CFO, Ruth Porat, effective July 31.
- The sign-on bonus of $9.9 million was granted to compensate Ashkenazi, a veteran of Eli Lilly, for “her prior company’s forfeited compensation,” according to the Friday filing. Her compensation package at Alphabet also includes a $13.1 million sign-on equity grant in the form of restricted stock units.
Dive Insight:
In 2023, Ashkenazi raked in $7.6 million in total compensation at Eli Lilly, including an annual salary of a little over $1 million and about $3.7 million in stock awards, according to a securities filing.
She’s leaving Eli Lilly on a high note after the company reported in April that it generated $8.77 billion in global revenues during the first quarter, an increase of 26% compared with the year-earlier period. The growth was driven primarily by new products such as Mounjaro, a medicine used to treat adults with type 2 diabetes, the company said at the time.
Ashkenazi has spent more than two decades at Eli Lilly in a variety of finance and operations roles, according to an Alphabet press release.
Prior to her current CFO position at Eli Lilly, she was controller and finance chief of the Lilly Research Laboratories unit. She also previously held roles as the CFO for a number of global divisions within Eli Lilly, including Oncology, Diabetes, Global Manufacturing & Quality, and Research & Development.
As the incoming CFO of Alphabet, Ashkenazi faces several challenges, including adapting to the fast-paced and innovation-driven world of Silicon Valley, aligning financial strategies with technological advancements, and managing regulatory scrutiny and market expectations, Shawn Cole, president at the executive search firm Cowen Partners, previously told CFO Dive.
The finance leadership transition comes at a critical time for Alphabet, when it’s locked in a race with other tech giants, including Microsoft and Amazon, for dominance in the arena of artificial intelligence.
“We’re very pleased to have found such a strong CFO, with a track record of strategic focus on long-term investment to fuel innovation and growth,” Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said in the company’s press release. “The AI era is giving us an incredible opportunity to innovate at scale across our core products, and to create entirely new products and experiences for our users and customers.”
Ashkenazi will continue to serve at “full capacity” in her current role through July, according to a press release from Eli Lilly. An internal and external search for her successor is “actively underway,” the company said.
