Apple's Tim Cook paid $102m this year including bonuses worth $98m

Apple’s chief executive, Tim Cook, was paid $102m (£76m) this year after collecting a huge share bonus linked to the iPhone maker’s stock market performance.

Cook was paid a basic salary of $3.06m, a cash bonus of $9.3m (up from $5.4m last year), and collected share awards worth $89m taking his total 2017 payout to $102m, Apple disclosed in a regulatory filing.

The bonus of 560,000 shares paid out in September. Cook received half the award because Apple’s stock delivered shareholder returns in the top third of the Standard & Poor’s 500 index during the past three years. He got the other 280,000 shares for simply staying in the job.

The stock package awarded to Cook when he became chief executive in 2011 was originally valued at $376m, but is now worth much more because Apple shares have increased six-fold since he signed the deal.

As long as he remains the boss, Cook will receive 560,000 shares of stock annually until 2020. He will then get 1.26m shares in August 2021 as the final payment under his original contract.

Apple’s filing also revealed that it requires Cook to travel by private aircraft “for all business and personal travel” for security reasons. Cook’s use of the private jet for his holidays cost the company $93,000. The cost of his personal security detail was $224,000.

Cook collected an extra $104,000 in “vacation cash out”, and his basic $3m salary was increased to $3,057,692 “because 2017 was a 53-week fiscal year, the 2017 salary amounts reflect an extra week of pay”. That extra week’s pay is slightly more than the median US annual household income of $56,516, according to the US Census.

Cook’s top five lieutenants were paid about $24.2m each. Luca Maestri, chief financial officer; Angela Ahrendts, head of retail; Johny Srouji, head of hardware technology; Dan Riccio, head of hardware engineering; and Bruce Sewell, the outgoing general counsel, collected $20m in share awards, cash bonuses of $3.1m and basic pay of just over $1m.

The amount paid to Jony Ive, the company’s British chief design officer, was not included in the filing.

Apple’s shares have increased by more than 200% since Cook became chief executive in August 2011, shortly before founder and previous chief executive Steve Jobs died.

The shares peaked at $176.4 on 18 December but have since weakened slightly to $170.60 following reports of weaker than expected demand for its new $999 iPhone X.

(THE GUARDIAN)