Eric Schmidt Reduces His Stake In Google

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who now goes by the title Executive Chairman, is reportedly reducing his stake in the company from 2.8% to 2.1% by selling $1.45 billion in stock as part of a trading plan adopted in November.

This is according to the Wall Street Journal, which cites a regulatory filing, and says the plan calls for Schmidt to sell up to 2.4 million of his 9.1 million shares. The plan, the Journal reports, enables him to spread stock trades over a one-year period to reduce market impact.

Schmidt was said to have been granted 14,331,703 shares of class B common stock at 30 cents per share, and 426,892 shares of Series C preferred stock at purchase price of $2.34 when he joined the company.

In 2004, he agreed to a base salary of $1, which continued through 2010 – not unlike what Mark Zuckerberg is doing. Schmidt is said to be only one of the few people who became billionaires (in U.S. dollars) based on stock options received as an employee for a company in which he was not a founder or related to a founder.

In last year’s Forbes ‘World’s Billionaires’ list, Schmidt was ranked the 136th richest person in the world at $7 billion.He reportedly got $100 million as he stepped down from the CEO position.