Married Alphabet Inc. chairman and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt is squiring yet another new girlfriend around town. Schmidt has been spotted out with socialite Ulla Parker, a divorcée known for her expensive taste.
Multiple sources tell Page Six that Schmidt and Parker, the glossy-haired ex-wife of Wall Street veteran Kevin Parker (who now runs Sustainable Insight Capital Management), have been spending time together after being introduced by mutual friends.
While some sources describe their relationship as romantic, a friend insisted, “They are just good friends. This is all quite new.”
A rep for Schmidt declined to comment. Parker didn’t respond.
Of course, Schmidt is still married to his wife of nearly 37 years, Wendy Schmidt, whom sources say he has no intention of divorcing. Eric has an estimated net worth of $11.6 billion, half of which Wendy could be entitled to because they were married while in graduate school in 1980.
Their marriage has been a source of speculation for years. Wendy, who lives in Nantucket, Mass., said in a 2012 interview that they started living separate lives because she felt like “a piece of luggage” following him around the world.
Meanwhile, Eric has been building a reputation as a womanizer, as well as heading a new Pentagon advisory board. In recent years he has dated at least two other New York-based women — Lisa Shields, an executive on the Council on Foreign Relations, and Vietnamese pianist Chau-Giang Thi Nguyen.
Parker, a regular on the New York and Hamptons social circuit, lives in a huge apartment overlooking Central Park and is known to like the expensive things in life. She told the Wall Street Journal last year of her love for haute couture. “It makes you feel wonderfully comfortable. You can wear it for eight hours and not want to get home and put on your PJs.”
Another source close to Eric adds it’s not just the cost of divorce that keeps him wed to Wendy: “It’s also convenient for him, because he simply cannot marry any of these other women.”