Alphabet Lawyer Reaps $27 Million From Stock Sales

David Drummond, chief legal officer and senior vice president of corporate development at Google parent Alphabet Inc., has earned a $27 million profit from the Nov. 1 sale of stock options in the technology titan, according to a recent securities filing by the company.

The stock sales come roughly a year after Drummond was accused of having an extramarital affair and fathering a child with Jennifer Blakely, a former subordinate in Google’s legal department. In August, Blakely posted an account of her relationship with Drummond on the blogging platform Medium.

Drummond, 56, issued a statement at the time denying claims by Blakely that he had affairs with numerous co-workers at Google. In early September, CNBC reported that Drummond married a 37-year-old woman who works in Google’s legal department, but who had not reported to him.

The revelations surrounding Drummond and other Google executives sparked protests by Google employees over the company’s treatment of internal sexual harassment claims. Earlier this year, the internet search giant moved to end mandatory arbitration proceedings for all workplace complaints.

Before joining Google in 2002, Drummond was a partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, a longtime outside legal adviser to Google, which last week paid $2.1 billion to buy smartwatch maker Fitbit Inc. Valentina Margulis, a former Wilson Sonsini paralegal now working as an in-house legal specialist at Google, is listed as the “attorney-in-fact” for Drummond on the Form 4 securities filing detailing 15 separate stock sales.

The Nov. 4 filing by Alphabet, first noted later that day via a Tweet from New York Times technology reporter Daisuke Wakabayashi, shows that Drummond made roughly $35 million from the sales of stock he purchased in the Mountain View, Calif.-based company for nearly $8.7 million. Drummond did not immediately return an email requesting comment about the sales, which netted him $27 million.

A proxy statement filed by Alphabet earlier this year revealed that Drummond was its second highest-paid executive in 2018, earning $47.2 million, about $46.6 million of which came in the form of stock awards. Bloomberg data shows that Drummond’s base salary has remained relatively stable over the years at $650,000.