Apple brass: A bargain at $281 million

“Five Apple Inc. employees who were paid $281 million last year are among the 100 highest-paid executives in the U.S.,” Caleb Melby reports for Bloomberg. “They’re worth every penny, according to the Bloomberg Pay Index, the first daily ranking of U.S. executive compensation.”

“Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook, Senior Vice Presidents Angela Ahrendts, Eduardo Cue and Jeffrey Williams, and former Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer have a combined pay package equivalent to about 1 percent of the company’s economic profit, according to the ranking,” Melby reports. “Cook received $65.2 million and delivered the best pay-for-performance among U.S. CEOs.”

“Ahrendts was awarded $82.6 million last year, making her the highest-paid executive at Apple, and the 10th-highest paid in the U.S. After running London-based fashion retailer Burberry Group Plc for six years, she joined Apple to oversee its retail and online businesses in May 2014, becoming the first woman on the company’s management team,” Melby reports. “Her pay, which included a sign-on bonus and a make-whole grant for awards left behind at Burberry, is equal to 0.3 percent of Apple’s $28.6 billion three-year average economic profit.”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: Worth every penny, indeed.

Related articles:
Apple CEO Tim Cook is a steal at $65 million in 2014 compensation – April 17, 2015
Apple CEO Cook more than doubled his paycheck to $9.22 million in 2014 – January 22, 2015

29 Comments

  1. I remember when idiots were bitching about SJ getting a plane from Apple, back when his nominal salary was one dollar a year. I said that we should have given him two planes.

    -jcr

    1. ‘I don’t get a salary at Apple. I get a dollar a year so that my family can be on the health plan, but that’s it. I make 50 cents for showing up … and the other 50 cents is based on my performance. I haven’t got any sort of odd chip on my shoulder about proving anything to myself or anybody else. Though the outside world looks at success from a numerical point of view, my yardstick might be quite different than that, I want to put a ding in the universe. Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me’

      ‘Steve Jobs Bio: The Unauthorized Autobiography.’

    1. Certainly better looking, and probably a lot cleverer than Ballmer – but her background is retail. Jobs made his view quite forcefully about having a Salesman as CEO of a tech company.

    1. Just wondering if Eddy Cue is one of the 5 Execs in the Top 100 in the US, where exactly is Ive ?
      ( if worth to the company is based purely upon Salary – as some in this thread appear to suggest)

      1. If i”m not mistaken, Apple does not need to declare Ive’s salary to the authorities (from which these people are getting the data to compile the list)

        Apparently ‘Designer’ is not an officially required position like Chief Financial Officer etc.

  2. I appear to be in the minority, but I don’t see why senior management should be paid the equivalent of 1% of the profits of a company. Are the rest of the workers paid in proportion to the profits made by the company. I think not.

    People keep trying to rationalize why it is fine to create a new “corporate nobility.” In my opinion, all of them are overpaid, some more than others.

      1. Clearly *you* do not understand that the corporate executive club is not capitalism, it is cronyism and elitism. They help to award each other massive pay packages, serve on each other’s Boards, and have completely separate compensation rules. They are, as I indicated, a modern form of nobility – corporate nobility. They play with the money and power that corporate leadership provides to them.

        Some are far better than others. Cook, for instance, is excellent. But, in the end, the vast majority are overpaid.

    1. Ahrendts appears on the list because Apple had to buy out the cash value of the stock options her former employer had in place to keep her.
      Apple therefore had to pay a large ‘one-off ‘ charge in the one year. That does not make her very senior in the company in the broader scheme of things.

  3. Although Wall Street won’t admit it, I think Apple’s management is doing a darn good job. I know people are always finding fault with Apple, but if Apple has its faults then you can only imagine all the companies below it must have even more faults. I don’t believe the perfect company exists but in my humble opinion, it’s as close as most companies will ever come to being perfect.

    Tim Cook is supposedly going to give his money away to causes, so whatever money he makes will eventually find its way to people who need it. Hopefully Ahrendts will be earning her fat bonus over a period of time, but that’s not guaranteed.

  4. Before everyone gets too upset, a vast majority of these pay packages are stock options that vest over several years. The actual salary is only a tiny percentage of the overall compensation. This encourages the executives to improve company performance so that the value of their stock can increase.

    But, I guess it’s just easier to read the headline and demonize them than it is to make the effort to understand the system.

  5. A famous & powerful person said fairly recently: “I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money.” I think it’s time the Apple brass start sharing with the rest of us…it’s patently unfair. (whah)

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