Apple’s Tim Cook tops the list of highest-paid CEOs

14 years ago

“Steve Jobs left big shoes. Apple Inc. is betting $378 million that Tim Cook is the right guy to fill them,” Scott Thurm reports for The Wall Street Journal.

“That is the value of the annual pay package Mr. Cook was awarded last August, when he was named Apple chief executive, about two months before Mr. Jobs died. Nearly all of the compensation stems from a grant of one million shares of restricted stock, valued at $376.2 million, based on Apple’s stock price at the time,” Thurm reports. “Mr. Cook’s 2011 compensation is the highest recorded in The Wall Street Journal’s annual CEO pay survey since at least 2006, when the Securities and Exchange Commission changed its rules for reporting executive pay.”

Thurm reports, “The shares carry unusual restrictions. Mr. Cook can’t sell half the shares before 2016, and the other half before 2021. Still, the rapid run-up in Apple’s stock means the shares are now valued at $530 million. In its proxy statement, Apple said it viewed the shares as compensation for the next 10 years, and not solely for 2011.”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: Cooks’ stock package is incentive to stay with Apple Inc. for the long haul, at least 10 years, not a annual salary.