Google Says Financial Chief Pichette Is Retiring--Update

By Alistair Barr And Rolfe Winkler

Google Inc. said on Tuesday that finance chief Patrick Pichette is retiring, the latest veteran executive at the Internet giant to head for the exits in recent months.

Mr. Pichette, 52 years old, hasn't set a date for his retirement, but Google said in a regulatory filing it expects a transition within six months with Mr. Pichette planning to help find his successor.

Mr. Pichette joined Google as chief financial officer in 2008 after seven years in executive roles at telecommunications operator Bell Canada. He was well liked on Wall Street, which saw him as a brake on the company's spending on ambitious projects created by co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

Mr. Pichette adds to a run of CFO turnover in Silicon Valley. Finance chiefs of Apple Inc., Facebook Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. all announced their departures in the past year. Unlike Google, those three companies named successors at the same time the retirements were announced.

"It's a loss for Google," Sameet Sinha, an analyst at B. Riley & Co., said of Mr. Pichette's decision. "When Patrick joined in 2008, he brought a sense of control over the company's finances at a time when spending was rising fast."

While Google's spending has continued to climb and to concern analysts, Mr. Pichette did a good job balancing the aspirations of the company's powerful founders with the needs of shareholders, Mr. Sinha said.

Mr. Pichette hosted the company's earnings conference call each quarter. In January, he suggested Google might slow its pace of investment for the first time in years.

Google will "seek a healthy balance between growth and discipline and the willingness to throttle back when we reach the limits of what we believe we can manageably absorb," he said at that time.

Mr. Pichette had gradually worked his way out of day-to-day responsibilities at Google in recent years, according to people close to the company. One of these people said that a natural replacement would be the company's vice president of finance, Jason Wheeler.

Google declined to comment.

In a blog post, Mr. Pichette said he is retiring to spend more time with his family. An avid cyclist and hiker he wrote: "I could not find a good argument to tell [my wife] we should wait any longer for us to grab our backpacks and hit the road."

Mr. Pichette has sold Google stock valued at roughly $55 million over the past five years, according to regulatory filings. He holds about 146,000 Google stock units, most of which cannot be sold until 2016 at the earliest. At Tuesday's 4 p.m. price of $559.85, those stock units would be valued at approximately $81 million.

Google disclosed Mr. Pichette's planned retirement in a regulatory filing after regular trading hours.

Google executives who left the company in recent months include Chief Business Officer Nikesh Arora, Android leader Andy Rubin and search technology executive Alan Eustace. All had been with the company for many years and had amassed sizable personal wealth as Google's profit soared along with its shares.

Write to Alistair Barr at alistair.barr@wsj.com and Rolfe Winkler at rolfe.winkler@wsj.com

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