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Businesses The Almighty Buck Apple

Tim Cook Gets $750 Million Bonus On 10th Anniversary As Apple CEO (cnn.com) 63

Posted by BeauHD from the treat-yourself dept.
Tim Cook celebrated 10 years as Apple CEO by collecting and selling off three quarters of a billion dollars' worth of stock. CNN reports: The transactions were revealed in a regulatory filing Thursday, which showed that Cook had acquired and sold more than 5 million shares of the iPhone maker. As head of the world's most valuable company, Cook has received lofty stock awards in recent years. One of the incentives was tied to Apple's performance in the S&P 500 over the past three years. The stock award was triggered this week because the firm was one of the index's top performers, generating shareholder returns of nearly 192% from August 2018 to 2021, it said in a filing. Cook's windfall came just days after he also donated 70,000 Apple shares (worth about $10 million) to charity, according to a separate regulatory filing Tuesday. It did not disclose the name of the recipient.

Cook joined Apple in 1998 and served in a variety of senior roles before assuming his current position, including chief operating officer and executive vice president of worldwide sales and operations. He was named CEO in August 2011, after co-founder Steve Jobs famously stepped down. Jobs died weeks later from complications of pancreatic cancer. Prior to joining Apple, Cook worked at Compaq and IBM (IBM).
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Tim Cook Gets $750 Million Bonus On 10th Anniversary As Apple CEO More

Tim Cook Gets $750 Million Bonus On 10th Anniversary As Apple CEO

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  • Profits thanks to Chinese slave labor (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Apple, Google, Nike, Coke, Disney, etc are all betting big that there is no reckoning at the end of time.

  • Rich man confirmed to be rich by his liquidating assets? It's not like we all though he was penniless before.

  • August 14, 2013

    There has been a minor flap about Oracle CEO Larry Ellison's interview with Charlie Rose on CBS This Morning, in which he said Apple is hopeless without Steve Jobs.

    When asked what would happen to Apple, Ellison said:

    We already know... We saw--we conducted the experiment. I mean, it's been done. We saw Apple with Steve Jobs. We saw Apple without Steve Jobs. We saw Apple with Steve Jobs. Now, we're gonna see Apple without Steve Jobs.

    As he spoke, Ellison charted Apple's success with his fing

    • You mean Larry Ellison, from ORACLE...

      One
      Rich
      Asshole
      Called
      Larry
      Ellison

      That guy?

    • Re:Choice Larry Ellison quote from when Cook took (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Saturday August 28, 2021 @01:33AM (#61737707) Journal

      To be fair, I predicted the same thing. CEO's can make a big difference in a company's success. You have to admit Apple is different under Cook. Apple does appear to be less "innovative" under Cook; however, it's crazy profitable with existing products. Cook's procurement and production expertise is paying off.

      If Jobs lived, I'm pretty sure he'd be market-testing curious new products and perhaps have gotten something similar to Google Glass right.

      • The difference is that Jobs was an innovator and Cook is a liquidator. He has the imagination of the average gnat. He can reap, but can't sow. He's good at keeping course but is too unimaginative to take the company to new places, and this will eventually be the downfall of Apple.

        No later than when there's nothing to be removed from the iPhone anymore without completely alienating the last customers.

      • It's not that different. Even under Jobs Apple only had one truly big product every decade, which is still pretty good. Jobs was just better at being excited about whatever Apple had to show off next. But even when Jobs was around, a lot of their success and return to prominence was Cook's management.

        Something like Google Glass, or what our vision of such a product should be when we imagine cool future technology, is probably still a way off from being possible without a lot of compromise or lackluster i

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Tablizer ( 95088 )

          [Google-Glass-like tech] is probably still a way off from being possible without a lot of compromise or lackluster in ways that it fails to live up to our fanciful ideas.

          We don't know that. Just because you and I can't think of ways to make it practical or integrated with phones/watches etc. doesn't mean Jobs wouldn't find a way. Taking cutting edge ideas that half work and making them consumer-friendly is his forte. He did it with education software (Apple II), GUI's, CGI, music players, smartphones, and t

  • that it's not higher
  • But that's not the right question to have. Question is what are the opportunity costs of giving him $750 million for the rest of us? How many doctors, physicists and mathematicians could we have educated with that money? How many decelinization plants could we have built? Electric cars. Solar power plants, etc, etc.

    And I don't think it's unfair to treat that is a zero-sum game given that we know for a fact that resources are still finite. If they weren't it wouldn't make the news when $750 million gets

    • Re:A lot of people question if he's worth that muc (Score:4, Insightful)

      by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Friday August 27, 2021 @09:53PM (#61737401)

      Tim Cook's salry/stock bonuses are unrelated to everything else you mentioned. He is the head of a company, a very profitable company. Those doctors, physicists and mathematicians work for either private companies or institutions of some form who pay their salaries. It is up to those institutions to pay more.

      As I have said in regards to Amazon on numerous occasions, if you don't like it, don't support it. If people are that upset about Tim Cook being rewarded for his success, then stop buying Apple products.

      • ... why is it even news?

      • Also, Tim is investing the money. He is not spending it on consumption.

        So it actually is being used for all those "other things".

        • Also, Tim is investing the money. He is not spending it on consumption.

          That's way worse, actually

        • Investing? In what? What kind of worthwhile investment with a positive ROI is there currently?

          This is a serious question, I have also a bit of money sitting here begging to be invested, the only problem is that there simply isn't anything sensible to invest in. Why do you think people park their money in real estate and in ridiculous nonsense like NFTs?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by imidan ( 559239 )
            I've made 13% since March on index funds...

            • That's not investment, that's taking money for walkies. An investment actually creates value and doesn't just ravage the market like locusts ravage a wheat field.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by DaHat ( 247651 )

      Basically we spent $750 million dollars on Tim Cook, and maybe that's worth it to Apple, but is it worth it to you? Because when we're talking that much money it's time to start asking that question. What are we as a civilization, heck what are you personally giving up for Tim Cook?

      Who is we? Are you an Apple stock holder? Have you ever purchased any of their products or used their store to purchase items? If not... I don't think you count as 'we', and if you have done so... willingly... why are you complai

      • society as a whole decided to dedicate $750 million dollars to one man. I'm not going to argue if he's earned it. I'm asking you, do you, DaHat, think the things you traded for Tim Cook were worth it?

        Because you absolutely did trade things for it. For $750 million dollars you got Tim Pool's leadership of Apple and all that entails. The high stock price of Apple, all the gear, etc, etc.

        But everything has a cost, and in a modern society we're heavily interconnected. That's $750 million that isn't bein
        • Not society as a whole, in fact society does almost nothing as a whole.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by DaHat ( 247651 )

          society as a whole decided to dedicate $750 million dollars to one man.

          Except that's not what happened, not by any means.

          I'm not going to argue if he's earned it.

          Good to know you aren't going to argue if he's earned it, because all of what you've said is irrelevant.

          That's $750 million that isn't being spent on education or early childhood development or clean air.

          What other value was created along with that 750 million? How much tax was paid on it or donated to such causes?

          Maybe we missed out on the next Ei

          • What other positive trade-offs are there? Other than one rich guy becoming even richer?

          • doesn't mean that's not what happened. Do we or do we not use money to allocate resources? Does the $750 million represent the allocation of resources or does it not?

            The point I'm trying to make is that there are trade offs. You began your comment by saying that wasn't the case and ended it by acknowledging there were. That's a good first step. Now ask yourself what those tradeoffs were.

    • As long as he just sits on it and doesn't buy anything with it, it's actually pretty meaningless. If anything, he's just mopping up excess liquidity from the money printing Fed, which staves off inflation.

      If he does get around to spending it, it depends on what he's spending it on. There comes a point where you can't spend much more on personal conveniences because you've already got everything you could possible use, but there is always the possibility of doing something useful for others. Maybe he could b

    • Re:A lot of people question if he's worth that muc (Score:4, Insightful)

      by RazorSharp ( 1418697 ) on Friday August 27, 2021 @10:29PM (#61737467)

      If you think about it, as long as we consider a massive federal debt to be acceptable (as our actions have indicated for decades despite chatter to the contrary), then there is no opportunity cost. We can just continue to have an annual budget deficit, print money, and educate those doctors, physicists, and mathematicians with money that only exists because the government says it does. As long as the U.S. government has credit it has more money.

      Not that I'm advocating for the above strategy. I just hope it illustrates how the opportunity cost idea is pretty weak. It's only an opportunity cost—only a zero sum game—if politicians start treating the budget like it's something that can't be infinitely stretched into the red (or we start to lose credit for doing so).

      Having said that, I'm all for taxing the shit out of Cook and other billionaires. There are two reasons for this. First, there's the issue of income disparity. It makes sense that some ought to earn more than others, but we have allowed this to go to such an extreme that we're creating a modern day aristocracy with all its trappings. This exaggerated income disparity is antithetical to representative government because of the ability of the wealthy to buy the government and ensure it only represents them. Second, we need to have the ability to lower taxes for guys like Cook when the shit hits the fan and the economy is doing poorly. We have lowered their taxes so much it would be untenable to do so further. This means we have sacrificed an important Keynesian lever (and we've sacrificed the others, too).

      Basically, you don't need the zero-sum argument to claim that a single person should not be able to accumulate so much wealth. I'll concede you can still make it; there is a limit to how much money the government has because it's constrained by what congress critters are willing to spend. Likewise, there are limitations to the size of the economy at any given point (labor, capital, technology, consumer appetite, etc.) despite any theoretical notions to the contrary. But your point—that Cook should not be able to accumulate such wealth—is better made through other arguments.

      • it's not like household debt. You can basically print as much money as you want up to the limits of your economy's productivity. Look up some stats on Wages vs Productivity, we're nowhere's near that limit. Plus, as I've pointed out before, we could pay off our foreign debt in about 7 years with the savings from Medicare for All. If you want fiscal responsibility there's your bag.

        The economy is zero sum until we have perpetual motion and limitless energy. We all make trade offs. If we didn't there'd be
        • It's really nice of you to take all of the horrible misunderstandings about economics and put them in one place.

          You're also neither a capitalist or a conservative. You're one of those people who've posted extensively about supporting Bernie Sanders and the policies that he advances. Do words even have meaning to you?
    • I'm giving up crappy PC technology for slick laptops since 2005. I lost the opportunity to configure my drivers every two weeks when I needed to reinstall Windows.

    • but is it worth it to you?

      Have you ever earned income and started saving towards retirement? If so you likely not only paid Tim Cook, but he also contributed to an increase in value in your retirement savings.

      Remember this is stock we're talking about, they didn't write him a $750m check.

      • Yes, stock that he sold. So, in other words, if you hold Apple stock, well, sucks to be you.

        • Without looking it up, what day on this graph did Cook sell his shares https://finance.yahoo.com/quot... [yahoo.com] and how does it compare to the value the day before and the day after? Hint: Apple's market cap changed 0.028% that day. Care to calculate a day to day variance in their stock price and compare it to this percentage?

          Bonus question: Did at any point while Tim sold his shares the value drop below $13 (which is incidentally the value of Apple when he took over).

          I don't see how it would at all suck to be an

  • this where the 30% app store cut go's

  • That's where you phone charger went. (Score:3)

    by Fly Swatter ( 30498 ) on Friday August 27, 2021 @10:49PM (#61737509) Homepage
    Instead of building one and putting in the box they gave him your money.

  • That is an unnecessary amount of money (Score:3)

    by skam240 ( 789197 ) on Friday August 27, 2021 @10:58PM (#61737521)

    I know this might be unpopular with conservatives but that is a completely unnecessary amount of money for a person to earn as I'm certain Tim cook's yearly salary is more than the vast majority of this planet will see in their entire life. Or country's economic health would be far better off if this money were to be distributed to Apple's lowest paid workers who would then go out and promptly spend it, thus generating jobs. All this money will do is further bloat an already bloated stock market which will do nothing for anyone but the affluent.

    • That's true but also I don't trust government to do a better job spending the money than Tim Cook does. Or even John McAfee. I don't trust the government to do a better job spending money than John McAfee does.

      • Well, it's hardly possible to do a worse job for society as a whole, so yes, I do believe that governments are in general more likely to have a positive impact on their populations. At least they have the nominal mandate to do so.

        That's not the case for corporations or their figureheads.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by skam240 ( 789197 )

        Well distrust of government isn't a problem for me (they're necessary and do a lot most people who take your stance I don't think properly appreciate) although obviously prudence is always necessary.

        Of course I was never talking about government being involved at all so that's your own tangent.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      One possible solution is a maximum wealth limit. Once someone hits it their tax rate is effectively 100%.

      Of course they can simply spend the money on stuff and instead of hoarding it, and then they will be allowed to keep more next year up to that limit. That way there might actually be some real trickle-down.

      We also need a better way to tax capital gains, which is where most super rich people's income is from.

      • No offense but a 100% tax is absurd after a certain threshold of wealth is absurd and inefficient. Those who would risk reaching such limit they would just put such wealth under others names or companies, etc (and no, you cant legislate to consider someone's company as their wealth as you would be probably entering an area that affects employment, wealth, innovation, etc...).

        There are already taxes on wealth which are progressive and motivated to make those own such wealth circulate it (that is, put to so

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          People often say that you can't craft a tax law that won't be avoided, but journalists don't seem to have any problem putting a figure on these guy's wealth. They are presumably estimating some things but there must be enough substantive wealth there to be taxable.

    • I know this might be unpopular with conservatives but that is a completely unnecessary amount of money for a person to earn

      He didn't earn it. I he earned significantly less but as it was investment locked up in the company it increased along with the company's value.

      Or country's economic health would be far better off if this money were to be distributed to Apple's lowest paid workers

      How do you know? You have no idea what he plans to do with it, other than the $10m he already gave to charity this week. He may spend it big contributing directly to America's GDP. He may invest it in a green energy project contributing directly to the environment. There's a fuckton of things you can do with that money better than paying some Apple employees.

  • 750 million bucks dispersed is background noise at best, but concentrated wealth permits accomplishments giving every starvling a penny to squander does not.

    Modern civilization is a capitalist outcome. Get over it.

    • Your squandering is my demand. The main reason there isn't anything to invest in is that the demand has dried up. No demand, no need to produce, nothing to invest in.

  • Laughably America kicked out the king of England and then spent a couple of hundred years bringing him back. And not just bringing one king back but hundreds of the buggers. You should be proud of yourselves.

    • Erh... what do you think the revolution was about except replacing hereditary kingship with financial based kingship? Ever bothered to check what these "revolutionaries" were?

      Hint: They weren't exactly the penniless paupers of the new country.

  • "Cook's windfall came just days after he also donated 70,000 Apple shares "

    meaning he still doesn't pay a dime of taxes.

  • So I can imagine some ways to spend the money, but none are appealing me. What I'd do: Pay the mortgage, buy a modest new car, but only since the current one is getting mature. Hire a part time chef or housekeeping. Turn down the job a notch. Travel a bit more. Oh and a hut in the mountains. Alright, with a helipad. Ok, I need a helicopter then as well. But really then my life would be fulfilled. OK, I need two helipads of course, one at my house and one at the hut. Wait, the pad would fill up most of the g

  • Let the flames begin. I'm not saying he should have received the really big bonus or not. Wondering what people think.

    I'll start the tree:
    YES
    Company didn't go bankrupt.

    NO
    He hasn't done a damn thing in 10 years. In fact some people think it's going down the tubes.

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