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Tim Cook to take 50% pay hit after shareholder feedback
- coldtea 4y agoAt his wealth level (1.7 billion) I doubt he works for the paycheck. Even his non-Apple-stock and tangible wealth would be enough to live for 50 lifetimes. If he was so inclined he could just call it quits after the cut out of spite, and hit those shareholders with a stock nosedive over the uncertainty and signalling of his departure. Of course his Apple stock would take a dive too, but it will be worth the fun!
- sn0w_crash 4y agoThat would be epic
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- sfe22 4y agoYeah, that is why I don’t think he gave this adjustment a second thought.
- coldtea 4y agoYeah, didn't mean to imply he'll be worried about the money loss regarding the adjustment - but for the implied insult :)
- wmeredith 4y ago1.7 billion dollars is ~23,000 years of a $75k/yr paycheck. That's a lot more than 50 lifetimes.
- coldtea 4y agoWell, you need some luxuries thrown in. For $1M/year and an average life expectancy of 80 years, he should be OK for 12-30 years, even with a decent stock hit :-)
- rhacker 4y agoWhy not drop it to 0?
- headsoup 4y agoWell we certainly wouldn't want to go around encouraging this sort of thing, think of all the other poor billionaires that might be affected!
- groffee 4y agoWould you work for nothing?
- shapefrog 4y agoYes. $0.00 salary. Jet, driver and security paid for plus $100mil bonus each year, no problems at all.
- sebzim4500 4y agoThe 47% cut includes bonuses, equity, etc. His salary is already a negligable portion of his compensation.
- shapefrog 4y agoFine, I will do it for $47million bonus. I start Monday.
- AnonC 4y agoIt always seems like earning nearly consistent profits is under appreciated, whereas revenue and profit growth (unlimited) are seen as the best markers for valuing companies. Apple has generally had very good profits (which also seems enormous in comparison to many other tech companies). While Tim Cook could do a lot better on getting the company to improve the quality of its products (especially software) and reducing efforts on slowly sliding into targeted advertising and tracking — both of which erode consumer confidence and could have a negative effect on the money Apple makes — he’s done quite well in keeping Apple mint a lot of money every quarter (I seem to recall “record breaking quarter” multiple times over the years). I’m curious to know what kind of pay cuts the CEOs of Meta, Tesla, Amazon, Netflix, Uber and other (tech and non-tech) companies are taking. Not just cuts in base pay, which is usually a paltry sum, but bonuses and other compensation.
- sokoloff 4y agoThat's one of the beautiful things about share-based compensation (from a shareholder angle). When the share price falls, the CEO and other executives take an automatic pay cut that's pretty directly linked to that (linear in the case of RSUs, superlinear in the case of options).
- rcme 4y agoThe pay cut is affine in the case of options, not super linear.
- dmitriid 4y ago> That's one of the beautiful things about share-based compensation (from a shareholder angle). The problem with shares is that they have become (or maybe have always been) a purely speculative asset. They rarely reflect the reality, and are always expected to just rise rise rise in price. Even if literally nothing changes, the company remains stable and profitable, the shares will take a dive because continuous unlimited growth is always expected.
- djbebs 4y ago
- shapefrog 4y ago> Cook’s annual base salary and bonus will remain unchanged at $3m and $6m respectively. But the “targeted” amount he will be given in share-based bonuses will fall from $75m last year to $40m this coming year. Not a smaller base salary, or performance related bonus (which is seemingly guaranteed), but a smaller extra bonus bonus. His $40mil of shares next year will probably be the same number of shares he received last year for $75mil anyway.
- crazygringo 4y agoWhat difference does it make which bucket it falls into? Adding up your numbers, it's a 42% pay cut either way, which is huge. If your "extra bonus bonus" is the majority of your compensation by far, then it's the main thing that matters. (It's wouldn't even be possible to cut his main salary/bonus by that much, since the cut is larger than both of them combined.) Also the number of shares is irrelevant, only their value when issued. And Apple's stock is currently only about 10% less than its average over the last year (from a rough eyeballing), so no, it wouldn't be the same number of shares anyways.
- Synaesthesia 4y agoIt's so much money that it's kind of beyond my imagination frankly.
- shapefrog 4y agoShares were issued 2022-09-25 ~ $150 mark. Next lot will be in a years time, plenty of trading days to go yet to get any number on the scale. The number of shares is irrelevant, only their value when they become unrestricted in a few years time.
- Jedd 4y ago> ... it's a 42% pay cut either way, which is huge. It's really not huge. He's worth north of $1b (USD), so his 'pay' is ~4% of his wealth - compare that to yourself / any other human you know. For a 62yo to churn through $1,500,000,000 (and interest earned on same) before they die will take some serious effort, but negligibly different effort than the $1,550,000,000 this story implies he'll have to contend with in a year.
- paulgb 4y agoIt’s neat to see a high profile case of Say on Pay (from Dodd Frank) actually working in the wild. It’s an advisory vote, so the company doesn’t have any legal obligation to act on it. But it forces the company to take a straw poll and share the results, which can be enough to nudge them into acting on it, even when only ~35% disapprove. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Say_on_pay https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Say_on_pay
- mensetmanusman 4y agoA room of rich people complaining about the share price when they know the share price is dictated by the fed printing or not. Seems stupid.
- vasco 4y agoThis is only performance art to justify lower compensation packages or semi-frozen raises when hiring across the board.
- cm2187 4y agoWell, if CEOs take credit when the whole market goes up...
- shultays 4y agoIn Apple's case, isn't Apple pretty much the whole (well at least a big chunk of) market in US?
- beardyw 4y agoI think this is about the global market.
- cm2187 4y agoThat's not even the point. When the Fed prints money, it pushes stocks up. CEO has done nothing. When the Fed raises rates, it pushes stocks down. CEO has done nothing. Not saying Apple is worthless but a lot of the rise in price of the past two years had nothing to do with the CEO's actions as for every other stocks.
- throwaway231a 4y ago[flagged]
- CubsFan1060 4y agoFrom what I can tell (and according to this article), he's the one who also recommended this: https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/12/23552711/apple-ceo-tim-cook-pay-cut-2023 https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/12/23552711/apple-ceo-tim-co... ) Given that he's pledged to give away his money before death, I don't think he's super concerned about it. https://www.forbes.com/sites/howardhusock/2015/03/29/tim-cooks-800-million-giving-pledge-why-its-so-important/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/howardhusock/2015/03/29/tim-coo...
- vasco 4y ago> Given that he's pledged to give away his money before death He probably is, but it always surprises me that billionaires think they know when they will die.
- lotsofpulp 4y agoIt seems reasonable to interpret “giving away one’s wealth before dying” to mean that they have a goal to not pass on a significant portion of their wealth to heirs, but rather donate it prior to succumbing to old age. Obviously, it is what it is if one were to die unexpectedly, but that is an obvious caveat that does not need a disclaimer.
- vasco 4y agoIf it's so obvious maybe it should be obvious that my comment pertains to the fact that if you want to give away your money, give it away. If you're telling people you're giving it away in the future you're just trying to live your whole life getting accolades without actually doing the thing you get accolades for. And then you might even die and not have done it.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago> If you're telling people you're giving it away in the future you're just trying to live your whole life getting accolades without actually doing the thing you get accolades for. Another possibility is they are encouraging others to make the same commitment.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bluSCALE4 4y agoShould have been a 99% pay decrease.
- jononomo 4y agoI don't understand people who are motivated by making money that is beyond the amount of money that they would need to buy a nice house and feed themselves well. Ten million dollars seems to me like enough money to immediately retire on. I just don't get it. If I were Tim Cook and I enjoyed my job then I would just take a salary of $1/year and not worry about it.
- gretch 4y ago> making money that is beyond the amount of money that they would need to buy a nice house and feed themselves well. What if he has a cause that he's working toward? Like he's donating X million every year toward Y disease cure? Because maybe he has a cousin or something with the affliction or some other personal reason. This is exactly what Bill Gates is working on with Malaria
- jononomo 4y agoI don't buy this line of reasoning -- if you have $10 million then you can just go to the front lines yourself and fight malaria directly. The idea that you're going to make a lot of money so that you can pay other people to live a good life in your place just doesn't cut it.
- therealdrag0 4y agoWhy would fighting it directly be better than funding others to fight it?
- gretch 4y agoWhat do you mean 'fight it directly'? You think he can just flip a switch from American businessman to becoming a PhD level biologist and epidemiologist and be actually effective at getting anything done? He's funding the work of experts in the field who have dedicated their lives so that the solution can actually be advanced.
- xracy 4y ago
- lizardactivist 4y agoSo now he has to make ends meet on, like, two million dollars a month? TWO!
- Awelton 4y ago49 million? But the poor man will starve!
- deafpolygon 4y agoThat's going to hurt.