Alphabet’s Chief Legal Officer Stepping Down Amid Investigation

After the departure of Eric Schmidt, Google’s former chief executive, from Alphabet’s board last year, Mr. Drummond was seen as one of the last major links to its past culture problems.

Jenn Kaiser, an Alphabet spokeswoman, said Mr. Drummond did not receive an exit package. However, his departure had been telegraphed in the last few months as he sold off most of his shares in Alphabet, unloading about $222 million worth of company stock since November.

Based on public securities filings, Google has disclosed that it has paid Mr. Drummond at least $258 million, including stock options and grants, since 2006, according to Equilar, an executive compensation consulting firm. That does not include what Mr. Drummond was paid before the company’s lucrative initial public offering in 2004 and excludes some years when his compensation was not public.

Last year, a committee of independent directors from Alphabet’s board hired a law firm to investigate its handling of allegations of sexual misconduct and inappropriate relationships by current and former executives as part of its legal defense against shareholder lawsuits over its handling of the matters, according to documents viewed by The Times.

The shareholder lawsuits accused the board of enabling the misconduct of Alphabet executives. Among the subjects in the inquiry were Mr. Drummond’s relationships with women at the company, according to the documents.

Mr. Drummond faced additional scrutiny in August when Jennifer Blakely, a former senior contracts manager in Google’s legal department, published an essay on Medium about her relationship with him. She wrote that Google forced her out of the legal department after the birth of their son made it impossible to the hide the relationship. Ms. Blakely was part of the Times article.

Her essay also said that Mr. Drummond had other extramarital relationships with women at the company after they split. At the time, Mr. Drummond said he had never started a relationship with “anyone else who was working at Google or Alphabet.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/10/technology/david-drummond-google.html?emc=rss&partner=rss