(JNi.media) Known as the most powerful woman on Wall Street, and one of the highest paid CFOs, Ruth Porat’s company Google will report earnings Thursday.
Porat is taking the finance helm at a time when company expenses have been increasing, causing concern for many investors. During the investors’ conference call, analysts are likely to pay special attention to her remarks about YouTube and the increasing threat of competition from Facebook.
Analysts will also want to hear about Google’s mobile ad strategy and Google Pay, and its app store which is now running ads.
Formerly of Morgan Stanley, Porat represents a trend of top level executives leaving Wall Street for high tech because of the generous pay.
Porat, who joined Google in May, has been taking care of the company’s expenses. Hiring at Google has been more modest as of late, a mere 1,819 new people, the smallest increase since the last quarter of 2013. The company stock has risen lately, on the news of the reduction in expenses.
But Google’s revenue growth and profit margins have been flat lately.
Ruth Porat’s father, Dan, was born in the Ukraine and emigrated to Palestine-Eretz Israel in 1938, settling on a kibbutz. Her mother, Freida, was born in Palestine-EI. Ruth’s parents moved to England after their marriage, and at the age of 2, Ruth’s family moved to Boston.
Porat graduated from Stanford and holds degrees from the London School of Economics and Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Google and Wall Street have not always gotten along, and the hope is that Porat will be able to speak the street’s language on behalf of Google. She has been auditing Google to find the best solution for cutting costs and allocating funds. She comes to the job highly recommended, as rumor has it that President Obama was considering an appointment of Porat as his Secretary of the Treasury.
When she was hired, in May, it was announced Porat would receive $70 million as Google’s CFO, one of the highest paid in the industry. This breaks down to a $5 million one-time signing bonus and $25 million stock grant this year vesting by 2017, and a $40 million biennial stock grant in 2016, vesting by 2019, added to a base annual salary of $650,000.
She has been married to Anthony Paduano, partner in the law firm of Paduano & Weintraub, since 1983. She is a breast cancer survivor.