Apple shareholders approved Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook’s annual compensation in a virtual meeting on Friday, and voted in favor of a proposal urging Apple to oversee a third-party civil rights audit of the company’s policies and practices.
By approving Cook’s pay package, investors rejected some concerns, including from proxy advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), over the magnitude and structure of his equity award. ISS had urged shareholders to vote against the pay package.
Cook, who took the helm in 2011, last year received a compensation package with a total value of $98.7 million, a sum 1,447 times that of the average employee, thanks to a stock grant as part of a long-term equity plan.
SOC Investment Group Executive Director Dieter Waizenegger, a proponent of the civil rights proposal, said the vote in favor of the resolution should push Apple to combat inequality and address harm to marginalized groups… Shareholders voted against proposals calling on Apple to increase transparency in the company’s efforts to protect workers in its supply chain from forced labor and another on gender and racial pay gaps.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple’s 2022 Proxy Statement is here.
“Yes, executive compensation is out of whack. Tim Cook is vastly overpaid for what he does. This is because he holds a rare skillset and it benefits the shareholders to have continuity in the CEO position. Basically, Apple overpays Tim Cook in order to have a long-term CEO which provides confidence to the market. A succession of different CEOs jumping from company to company every other year seeking higher salaries would be a negative and justifies Cook’s overpayment. Cook is paid to stay more than for what he actually does. This is why he has vesting targets set years into the future. If he stays, providing continuity, he benefits and so does the company’s stock price.” — MacDailyNews, February 18, 2022
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