From Tim Higgins' "Apple CEO Tim Cook Received Nearly $100 Million in Compensation in 2021" in Friday's Wall Street Journal:
Last year marked Mr. Cook’s 10th year as CEO since taking over from co-founder Steve Jobs shortly before his death. “It has been a remarkable decade for Apple, and in 2021 Mr. Cook was granted an equity award for the first time since he was promoted to the CEO role,” the company said in the filing. In that decade, Apple’s shares rose by more than 1,100%, about triple the increase of the S&P 500, according to the filing.
In addition to last year’s compensation plan, Mr. Cook saw the vesting of previously awarded stock valued at $754 million. In 2020, he had a total of $281.9 million in restricted stock that vested during the year.
Mr. Cook has said he plans to donate most of his wealth to philanthropic causes.
My take: This is what Scott Galloway would probably call a massive transfer of wealth.
*Includes reinvestment of all dividends into Apple stock according to the 2022 Proxy statement. (It's better designed than most. See charts below.)
BTW, one does not risk Mr. Cook by flying him commercial.
Apple Inc boss Tim Cook’s pay in 2021 was 1,447 times that of the average employee at the tech giant, a filing on Thursday showed, fueled by stock awards that helped him earn a total of nearly $100 million.
In 2021, the median pay for employees was $68,254, Apple said, adding it had selected a new median employee for comparison due to changes in hiring and compensation.
The median pay in 2020 was $57,783 and the pay ratio was 256 times Cook’s salary.
From Barron’s:
The pay package was almost seven times more than the $14.8 million seen the previous year. The increase was largely due to granting of restricted stock worth $82.3 million.
Now we know retail facing employees have had a tough time dealing with at times very unruly Apple users and customers, and there’s no doubt other workers are stressed about working from home or the risks in the office. And we have seen many employees who have left Apple for other colored pastures or challenges.
But few to none, IMO, could deal with the stress, complexities, demands, execution, planning, nay the endless meetings, project reviews, internal conflicts and the quest for “best it can be” Apple DNA products and services that come with being in highest level Apple management.
Cook, et. al., have “a unique set of skills”, and have been with Apple for years building a coherent team to manage the company, not without some missteps along the way over the last decade. But the results have been overwhelmingly positive, in major part because of the 150,000+ Apple employees across all spectrums, AND the management from lower to upper to C-Suites.
IMO, Cook deserves his special compensation and recognition pay / RSUs for deftly engaging and dealing with specific US, European, Chinese, Indian (and more) politicians, regulators, governments and their policies, supply chains, competitors and partners alike with their CEOs, policies/complaints, and been the face of the Company / Brand & target of the media.
Tell me that isn’t a million times more stress and work than the median employee.
I do not believe this is an example of a transfer of wealth, but a creation of wealth.
A transfer of wealth is when someone looses money/assets and gets nothing in return, and, on the other end, someone receives money/assets and gives nothing in return.
On top of that, there are the almost invisible helps provided by Apple products. To name just one I’ll cite Spotlight. So many times I’ve found documents in seconds, not just saving time, but if I hadn’t found the documents I’d have been stuck.