Google Chief Now Highest-Paid Boss In America

Google boss Sundar Pichai is now the highest-paid chief executive in America after being awarded $199m (£138m) of shares.

He became chief executive in October after its reorganisation into holding company Alphabet (Xetra: ABEA.DE - news) , and was given 273,328 shares, according to a company filing.

It is more than the £130m ($187m) Google has agreed to pay the UK government in back taxes since 2005.

The award takes his total Alphabet holding to around $650m (£450m) - yet even this figure falls way short of the net worth of Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

They are worth around $34bn each, according to Forbes.

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And Google's former chief executive, Eric Schmidt, holds shares worth around $3bn.

Mr Pichai's award will vest in quarterly increments until 2019.

The 43-year-old was recently seen at Super Bowl 50 in San Francisco, where he posted a photo of himself on Twitter (Swiss: TWTR.SW - news) meeting NFL legend Ronnie Lott.

Alphabet's chief financial officer, Ruth Porat, was given shares worth around $38m on top of the $30m signing bonus she got after leaving Morgan Stanley (Xetra: 885836 - news) last year.

And Google cloud computing boss Diane Greene was awarded shares worth $42.8m, on top of around $150m she was given when Google bought Bebop Technologies - the company she founded.