“‘I think you’d have to be a pretty smart guy to do what you do and pretty tough guy, too – you have that reputation,’ John McCain, the Republican senator, said on Tuesday, peering out at Tim Cook,” Tim Bradshaw reports for The Financial Times. “Wide-eyed, respectful yet softly relentless, Apple’s chief executive was making the case, at a hearing on Capitol Hill, for its accounting, which is under intense scrutiny from politicians keen to quell public ire over big companies’ tax ‘avoidance.'”
“Casting Apple’s history as an innovator and a creator of American jobs, the 52 year old turned the potential persecution into a promotional opportunity,” Bradshaw reports. “Mr Cook called for a lower US corporate tax rate to encourage Apple to repatriate $100bn of offshore funds. He made Apple’s Irish subsidiaries, where profits are taxed at just 2 per cent, simply seem like a rational response to the flaws of the US tax code.”
Bradshaw reports, “Apple hates talking about anything but its products. Its marketing strategy is to focus attention on the gadgets, not its executives. That is doubly so for Mr Cook. The private man, who grew up and went to college in Alabama, has given little away about his life outside Apple – if, indeed, he has one. This year he told a conference that he goes into Apple stores when he’s having a bad day, saying it’s like taking an antidepressant for him. He rises at 3.45am and often works long enough to talk to China in the evening.”
Read more in the full article here.
