Google's Schmidt to sell off $2.5bn stake

Google chairman Eric Schmidt is to sell off roughly $2.5bn of his company stock holdings.

The company in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said that Schmidt would be selling 3.2 million shares of Google stock - more than 40 percent of the 7.6 million shares of Class A and Class B stock controlled by Schmidt.

According to Google, Schmidt's sell-off would represent as much as 8.2 percent of Google's total voting stock and 2.3 percent of the company's total outstanding stock.

The move looks to bring in a multi-billion dollar windfall for Schmidt, who is largely credited with helping to guide Google from a promising startup into the world's largest search engine and a leader in the cloud computing and software as a service (Saas) spaces.

Schmidt in 2011 announced that he would be stepping down from as chief executive after more than a decade, handing the reins over to company co-founder Larry Page. He has since remained on the company's board of directors.

In addition to his work with Google, Schmidt has served as a member of Apple's board of directors prior to leaving over conflicts connected to the release of the Android operating system.

More recently, Schmidt has devoted his time and effort to bringing about internet policy reforms in North Korea and fighting targeted hacking efforts in China.