back to article How does Apple chief Tim Cook's package look now? Like $89m

Apple chief exec Tim Cook has been handed $89m (£69m) in shares after exceeding his performance target. The windfall was due to the sale of 560,000 shares, half of which were linked to the company's performance, according to a regulatory filing. The handout is part of his long-term stock options of one million shares if he …

  1. AndyS

    Tax?

    > Cook had previously dismissed the case as "political crap" in an interview with the Irish Independent.

    That's interesting, because most of the civilised world had categorised Apple's behaviour as "tax-dodging bullshit."

    1. Hans 1

      Re: Tax?

      Apple are not alone, of course, but yes ... tax dodging bullshit it is.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    How does Apple chief Tim Cook's package look now?

    That's a rather personal question!

  3. DJO Silver badge

    The continuing myth of trickle down

    This shows the absurd distribution of monies in large companies.

    Tim gets so much money he eventually plans to give it all away (if the will isn't contested) but until then it sits in a bank doing nothing and actually removes money from circulation so it provides no positive stimulus to the economy

    Now if $100million had been spread over 1 million people, they each would have $100 to spend which most would causing the money to keep moving and provide a stimulus to the economy, hell some would spend the money on Apple products which would help them.

    Trickle down doesn't work, has never worked and will never work. Trickle up however has a long history of working and always does work but it means giving money to the less well off members of society and that'll never pass muster in American boardrooms.

    1. Cronus

      Re: The continuing myth of trickle down

      I'm no fan of the mega-rich greedy corporate types but I have to wonder, in the trickle up system, what exactly do you do once it's all trickled up to the corporate types again? Do you just keep giving it away? That doesn't seem very workable.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: The continuing myth of trickle down

      I agree with quite a lot of that.

      Tax is the answer. Some companies simply have no moral right to make as much money as they do, while contributing as little.

    3. Charlie Clark Silver badge

      Re: The continuing myth of trickle down

      Two things: money never just sits around in the bank doing nothing. This is impossible with fractional reserve banking. However, that money is unlikely to be funding a business load because the returns are too small.

      Secondly, cash handouts are relatively common (usually in the form of tax rebates) but they run the risk of being unsustainable straw fires: the £ 100 tends to get spent quickly on consumables and have little long term effect on the economy. As, as someone else has pointed out the money will quickly find its way to corporate accounts. This is when you need effective redistribution policies.

      This is why governments far prefer things like infrastructure or incentives for large-scale purchases (cash for clunkers schemes and the like) as a way of keeping the money circulating for longer. I suspect we'll see some new ones before too long.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: The continuing myth of trickle down

        Using the money to fund medical research, education, or other things to improve society is always a good option.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Unfortunately until the electorate vote in a government that has some balls and taxes these corporations we are doomed to have a shrinking economy. Neoliberalism can never work. Even for the rich - the evidence is that the long term effects are a smaller economy. Too much debt, too much tax avoidance, and too much wealth concentrated in the hands of just six people.

  5. The Onymous Coward

    "Apple outperformed the middle third of the companies in the S&P 500"

    Surely they outperformed the bottom two-thirds?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      or, they were in the top 166 out of 500

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Surely they outperformed the bottom two-thirds?

      The great thing about numbers is that they are so remarkably flexible. I suppose the unfortunate thing is that Cook is trousering almost $100m for being very ordinary. I'm not a Steve Jobs enthusiast, but he did stuff that kept Apple out in front within its niches, whereas Cook has presided over, not quite mediocrity, but a lack of genuine innovation. Maybe Jobs himself would have had writer's block, and wouldn't have done any different, but the company under Cook appears to be coasting. You can buy a decent phone of broadly similar spec to the latest iPhone 7 for about £150 - and Apple are still charging about £600. Sales are holding up, so why does Cook need to worry? In the short term he's good, Apple customers are mostly habitual, they upgrade religiously to each new model, they pay the Apple tax without complaint. But as the technology commoditises, the alternatives are getting better much faster than the top end offerings from Apple and Samsung. So what's happening here is that Cook is betting his entire company on the inertia of his customers, and upon iTunes.

      Is placing that bet really something he should be paid for at all?

      1. Dave 126 Silver badge

        > I suppose the unfortunate thing is that Cook is trousering almost $100m for being very ordinary. I'm not a Steve Jobs enthusiast, but he did stuff that kept Apple out in front within its niches, whereas Cook has presided over, not quite mediocrity, but a lack of genuine innovation

        Okay, I need to pick you up on this. You're rating innovators over good managers, regardless of the dollar value they bring. You're judging Cook against a subjective definition of 'innovation', and though you may well be right, it is not directly linked to the profits the company makes and thus the pot from which to pay him.

        Also, you've neglected to include a sample group - are any other companies innovating in the way you mean, or are they all hedging their bets and investing in the 'next big thing' (cars? IoT? AR? Healthcare?) just as Apple are? Exactly.

        Oh, you might want to look at Apple's R and D spending over the last decade.. it's grown hugely.

        What seems clear about Apple under Jobs' return is that they had their shit together, thanks in no small part to their COO Tim Cook. A company is a team effort - the clue is the word 'company'. A fantastic bit of industrial design, product design or UI design is visible to you, but how are you judging Cooks supply chain management skills? Their bottom line suggests he's more than a bit damned good at what he does.

        tl; dr Have some courtesy for the professionals whose work you can't grok.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Okay, I need to pick you up on this. You're rating innovators over good managers, regardless of the dollar value they bring.

          No, you're making that assumption. And you're ignoring the concept of leadership that is very different to managing. Cook probably is a good manager - ticks all the boxes, doesn't scream at the employees, sets realistic targets, all corporate, corporate, corporate. I know that, I work in that world, and I'm PART OF THAT WORLD. I don't innovate, I don't lead, I'm part of a corporate team that manage, and "managers" are effectively the follow up crew who are the stewards of the assets created by innovators, and the organisations fashioned by leaders. I have known and worked with many UK large company directors, and there's barely a single leader amongst them. Some good managers, some bad managers, many mediocre, but few leaders, no innovators. The leaders don't last in the corporate world because the profile of leadership doesn't tick the boxes of the corporate world, and the innovators don't stay because they are actively held back by corporate management.

          Structuring a supply chain is corporate. It doesn't need leaders, it needs little real innovation - all about contracts, KPIs, and good organisation. Apple's market success is all about brand, and about product. All the rest, everything that Cook is good at is simply a hygiene factor (there's other markets where supply chain is a critical success factor, but not for Apple - Apple customers will wait, if they have to) . Arguably the current strength of Apple's bottom line is down to the lack of clear, credible product challenge in the high-margin premium segments (for which nobody in Apple can take any credit), and the bit of Apple that can take some credit is the marketing department, who have very capably supported some good yet lacklustre products since SJ shuffled off his mortal coil. Spending more on R&D is hardly a good thing, when there's so little to show for it. I think Cook feels pressured on the innovation side, and has been throwing more at R&D, hoping that something will turn up. That won't work unless Apple can back the mavericks, which I doubt. Remember how Motorola only came out with the V3 because the people doing it kept it secret from the rest of the company? But Motorola wouldn't learn, and thus have been sold on twice (Lenovo appear to be doing a good job, so far). Likewise Nokia, who a decade ago were fighting it out with Apple is THE phone company - where did their R&D investment get them?

          So, perhaps you should have some courtesy for commentards who have considerable experience in managing large complex organisations in multiple sectors, and can make a fair and reasoned judgement on the performance of other companies?

        2. CRConrad

          I don't think that word means what you think it means.

          "A company is a team effort - the clue is the word 'company'."

          I think that usage of "company" refers to the company of owners of the enterprise, not their employees.

          (Sure, Cook is both, but as I understood it he got his shares from working there, not the other way around.)

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Outperforming the middle third

      If he outperformed 499 of the S&P 500 he outperformed the middle third as well. It sounds like the incentive was "you get your full payout if Apple outperforms the middle third", not that they were saying that's all he did.

      As an Apple shareholder, given the massive size of his stock award I'd think it would be more appropriate to only award the full payout if Apple was in the top 10% at the very least. While I'm not sure incentives really matter much once you're already pocketing the better part of a billion dollars over the course of a decade, what's the point of incentives that say "we demand slightly better than average!" which is what finishing above the middle third is. Give a big incentive for being in the top 10 of the S&P 500, less for being in the top 100, and lose your incentive payment completely if you're in the bottom third - because if so there are obviously a lot of CEOs who would potentially do a better job!

  6. wallaby

    Has anyone organised a collection ?

    Poor sod, not a billionaire yet

    pass the hat round

  7. commonsense

    Overcomplicating things

    "In 2015, Cook told Fortune that he planned to donate his estimated $785m fortune to charity – after paying for his 10-year-old nephew's college education."

    Here's a thought - donate $784 million now, and keep $1m for your nephew in trust.

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