This article is more than 1 year old

Tim Cook trousers $135m in Apple shares

CEO celebrates five years by getting even richer

Apple CEO Tim Cook is $135m richer this week after receiving 1.26 million shares in the electronics giant, immediately selling $36m worth of them.

Cooky announced the share provision in an SEC filing [PDF]. It forms part of a deal where he will receive seven million shares in the company by 2021.

Most of the shares were awarded due to his remaining as CEO for five years and the remainder were thanks to share-price performance: the company has outperformed two-thirds of the S&P 500 companies.

Of those shares, he sold $36m dollars worth, forfeited $71m for taxes and kept hold of the remainder. The original deal Cook signed when he took over as CEO in 2011 was that he would receive one million shares – but that became seven million when the company did a stock split in 2014.

About a third of Cooky's shares are tied to how the company's stock price performs. As such, the number of new shares he receives may fall given the company's recent profit drop.

He will be hoping to turn that around next week at Apple's annual product launch, where the company is expected to announce a new iPhone and a revamped line of laptops.

Cook's shares are a critical income stream for the CEO, who has to make do with a mere $10m in salary and bonuses per year. Meanwhile, workers at the Chinese company Pegatron, which produces many of Apple's products, received their own good news last week: a wage cut to $1.60 per hour. ®

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like