Ruth Porat (born 1958) is a British-American business executive, serving since 2015 as the
chief financial officer (CFO) of
Alphabet Inc. and its subsidiary
Google.
Porat was CFO and
executive vice president of
Morgan Stanley, from January 2010 to May 2015
In 2020, Porat was listed as the 16th most powerful woman in the world by ''
Forbes'',
and seventh on ''
Fortunes Most Powerful Women list in 2020.
Early life and education
Porat was born to a Jewish family in
Sale, Cheshire, England,
the daughter of Dr. Dan and Frieda Porat.
She moved at a young age to
Cambridge, Massachusetts, where her father was a research fellow in the physics department at
Harvard University. Her father three years later relocated the family to
Palo Alto, California, where he worked at the
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory for 26 years.
Porat has a bachelor of arts degree in economics and international relations from
Stanford University and holds a master's degree in
industrial relations from
London School of Economics and an MBA with distinction from
Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Career
Morgan Stanley
Porat began her career at Morgan Stanley in 1987 and left in 1993 to follow Morgan Stanley president
Robert F. Greenhill to
Smith Barney and returned to Morgan Stanley in 1996. Before becoming CFO, she served as vice chairman of investment banking from September 2003 to December 2009 and the global head of the Financial Institutions Group from September 2006 to December 2009. She was previously co-head of technology investment banking and worked for Morgan Stanley in London.
While a banker at Morgan Stanley, she was credited with creating the European debt financing that saved
Amazon from collapse during the
dot-com melt down in 2000. Her financial partner during the Internet investment banking craze was
Mary Meeker, the godmother to Porat's three children.
During the financial crisis, Porat led the Morgan Stanley team advising the
United States Department of the Treasury regarding
Fannie Mae and
Freddie Mac, and the
New York Federal Reserve Bank with respect to
AIG. In the 2011
HBO movie ''
Too Big to Fail'', Porat is played by
Jennifer van Dyck. In May 2011, she presented to the
Bretton Woods Committee hosted by the
International Monetary Fund in
Washington, D.C., on post-crisis reform and financial legislation, and to the
World Economic Forum in
Davos in 2013 on "trust" levels within and of the financial sector.
In 2013, it was reported that President
Barack Obama would nominate Porat as the next
Deputy Secretary of the Treasury. However, it was reported later by
Bloomberg News and ''
The New York Times'' that Porat had contacted White House officials to withdraw her name from consideration because of improving conditions at Morgan Stanley and the acrimonious confirmation process inflicted upon then Treasury Secretary-nominee
Jack Lew.
Porat's career was analyzed in the
McKinsey & Company study "How Remarkable Women Lead". She was named "Best Financial Institutions CFO" in a poll conducted by ''
Institutional Investor'' for its "2014 All-America Executive Team".
Google
On March 24, 2015, it was announced that Porat would join
Google as its new CFO as of May 26, 2015.
''Bloomberg Business'' reported that her hiring deal amounted to $70 million. She has been credited with boosting Google's share price by reorganizing the company and imposing financial discipline. For the "2018 All America Executive Team", she was named "Best Internet CFO" by ''
Institutional Investor''. Porat spoke at the ''
Fortune'' Most Powerful Women Summit in Dana Point, California, on October 19, 2016, in her capacity as CFO of
Alphabet Inc. and
Google. At
Google, in addition to Finance, Porat also has Business Operations, "People Ops",
Google's human resources function, Real Estate and Work Place Services reporting to her. She was paid $46 million in 2020, $47 million in 2018, $688,000 in 2017, and $39 million in 2016
Board membership
She is a member of the Board of Directors of
Stanford University Management Company, the University's endowment, the Board of Directors of
The Council on Foreign Relations,
and a member of the Board of Directors of
The Blackstone Group. She previously served on the Board of Trustees of
Stanford University, the Borrowing Advisory Committee of the
United States Treasury, and the Board of Trustees of the
Economic Club of New York. She is a member of the Advisory Council of the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy at the
Brookings Institution, and the Economic Strategy Group at the
Aspen Institute.
Political views
Porat supported Senator
Hillary Clinton when she ran for president in 2008, hosting a fundraiser at her apartment in
The Dakota in New York City, and did the same in 2016. In 2011, Porat expressed her support for increased taxes on the wealthy and declared on the topic of significant spending decreases that "we cannot cut our way to greatness".
Personal life
Porat has been married to her husband, a partner in the law firm Paduano & Weintraub, since 1983.
Porat is a survivor of
breast cancer.
In September 2015, Porat reportedly paid $30 million for a house in
Palo Alto.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Porat, Ruth
Category:1957 births
Category:Living people
Category:American chief financial officers
Category:American financial businesspeople
Category:American people of English-Jewish descent
Category:American women business executives
Category:British emigrants to the United States
Category:Alumni of the London School of Economics
Category:Stanford University alumni
Category:Directors of Morgan Stanley
Category:Morgan Stanley employees
Category:Google employees
Category:Alphabet Inc. people
Category:Women chief financial officers
Category:Women financial analysts
Category:Stanford University trustees
Category:Council on Foreign Relations