Google imports new CFO Ruth Porat from Wall Street

Google has lured away Morgan Stanley’s chief financial officer, Ruth Porat, to be its CFO at a time when the Internet search leader and its Silicon Valley peers are under fire for hiring and promoting too few women.
The appointment fills a void that opened earlier this month after Google’s CFO of the past seven years, Patrick Pichette, announced his plans to retire.
Porat, 58, will become Google’s highest-ranking female executive when she starts her new job on May 26. Her last day at Morgan Stanley will be April 30, ending a 28-year career at the New York investment bank.
Google Inc. and other Silicon Valley heavyweights, including Apple Inc. and Facebook Inc., are trying to add more women to their payrolls.
The push began during the past 10 months after the companies released data revealing that women only filled 15 to 20 percent of the tech jobs, which tend to pay the most.
Kleiner Perkins, a venture capital firm that has financed Google and other prominent technology companies, is currently embroiled in a San Francisco trial that is airing embarrassing allegations of sexual discrimination. In the past week, sexual discrimination lawsuits have been filed by women who formerly worked at Facebook and Twitter.

Porat’s defection from a top job on Wall Street serves as the latest reminder of the technology industry’s allure as its products reshape culture and enrich the companies creating them.
Google has been at the forefront of upheaval during the past 15 years. Besides building the Internet’s dominant search engine and digital ad network, the Mountain View, California, company also boasts the top mobile operating system in Android and the most popular video site in YouTube, as well as the popular Chrome browser and Gmail service.
The success has spawned three multibillionaires — Google CEO Larry Page, co-founder Sergey Brin and Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt. Thousands of other Google employees, including its former chef and masseuse, have become millionaires.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Share:

Print