Intel's 'Little Otter' earns $22m from Google meetings

You've really made it in Silicon Valley when two of the region's elite firms overpay you for executive services.

Intel CEO Paul Otellini took home a paltry $700,000 salary in 2006. The chip maker, however, padded that out with close to $6m worth of other compensation through option grants, incentive plans, retirement aid and the like. But Otellini had to really work for that cash, steering Intel back on course after it endured a drubbing from rival AMD.

Otellini doesn't have to work quite as hard for the $22.3m he's received as a board member at Google.

Yes, that's right. Otellini has averaged about $464,000 per Google board event, according to a report from the Mercury News

Otellini receives stock options rather than yearly payouts from Google.

As the paper details,

When Otellini first joined Google’s board in April 2004, months before its initial public offering, he was granted an option to buy 65,000 shares of its stock at $35 a share, or $2.28 million. Google shares were first offered to the public through an auction process that priced them at $85 before they first began trading in August 2004.

Otellini sold 23,833 shares of Google from Nov. 16 to Nov. 20 at an average per-share price of $638.15, giving him a profit of more than $600 per share. He sold 21,666 shares in 2006 at an average price of about $400 per share. His total profit on his Google options so far: $22.3 million.

Since 2004, Google has held about 48 board events, giving Otellini a heck of an average payout.

Clearly, this is good work if you can get it, and we'd like to remind all of the major Silicon Valley players that our board services are open to the highest bidder. We can drink coffee and mind-meld with the best of them. ®