Apple's CEO - A Poor Billionnaire

- Relevant to P1 (GRE) 

Pic 01: The new IPhone 5 - Will it make Apple's CEO Tim Cook richer?

Note that Executive Directors' pay are crucial Corporate Governance Tool to align them to shareholders' expectations. The critical role that Remuneration Committee play also must not be overlooked. 

What was done in designing Apple's CEO pay is obviously to reduce the repeat of it collapsing. It did twice since its incorporation. 

Take a look at how the real world design Executives' pay. On a side note, the new IPhone 5 looks slimmer and more attractive design and content. I recommend you don't purchase it because precisely the point that its attractive design and has wonderful content. - Buy it after you graduate ACCA! By then could be IPhone+ISpecs 8. 

Apple’s new iPhone 5—set to be unveiled Wednesday, September 12, 2012 in San Francisco—will have a longer screen. It will have LTE technology for faster data downloads. And it will be packed with vitamins and nutrients to give you hours and hours of energy.

No, wait, that’s the 5-Hour Energy drink. 

All right, I give up. I don’t know what’s in the iPhone 5, or the alleged iPad Mini, which may also be unveiled. And I don’t care. I seem to be alone. I look around and all I see are people tapping away on their iPhone screens, oblivious to the world around them. In a coffee shop recently I saw a group of young friends sitting next to each other, ignoring one another, tapping away.

But although I remain immune to the iMania, I can hardly ignore the company. None before has been this successful, ever. 

Apple stock hit a new high of $680 on Monday; it closed at around $660 Tuesday. It is already by far the most valuable company in history. The market value is $620 billion. It has nearly doubled since the late Steve Jobs stepped down as CEO in August of last year. 

There are many reasons for the company’s phenomenal success, of course. The products have good technology, very good design and amazing marketing. Most important of all, Apple has been blessed with absolutely, monumentally, are-you-kidding-me incompetent rivals. 

But here’s one more thing that deserves notice, because it rarely gets any attention, and it’s important for investors. 

Incentives

Steve Jobs made his money on the stock, not on salary, bonuses or other flimflam. If the stock went up, he made money. If it had gone down, he would have lost it. 

And new CEO Tim Cook, the man who will be on stage Wednesday, is in the same boat.

On Aug. 24 of last year, when he took over from Jobs, Cook was granted a giant fistful of restricted Apple stock: 1 million shares. 

That’s some incentive.

Pic 02: Poor Billionnaire. Can see his paper gains on Apple Shares but can't touch them.

They had a face value of $380 million when he got them. In the year and three weeks since, he’s made another $285 million in paper gains on that stock alone. 

Cook was already holding about 360,000 shares of restricted stock even before taking the helm. Bottom line? The man has made about $390 million on his Apple stock in the 55 weeks since taking over, and his stake is already worth more than $900 million. 

No kidding. Just over a year ago, he was someone you’d never heard of. Now he’s nearly a billionaire, thanks to the iPhone, the iPad and the like. 

If you’re curious, the 5.5 million Apple shares that the late Steve Jobs left in his estate have gained about $1.6 billion in value since he stepped down as CEO.

Pic 03: Rich, Super-rich but dead billionnaire. Hmmm... not an enviable position.

But there’s a twist. Cook can’t cash in most of those shares for years. Of the 1 million restricted shares he was given in August of last year, half of them won’t get unlocked until 2016, and the other half won’t until 2021. 

In other words, Tim Cook’s incentives are the complete opposite of those now considered normal in big public companies. He can’t make lots of money by taking big gambles with stockholders’ money, or by juicing the stock for a short-term pop. The only way he can make serious money is by building long-term value. 

The future is unknowable—especially in the technology industry, and especially over five or 10 years. I’ll be amazed if iPhones and iPads have the same cachet or cult status then that they seem to have now. But if you are an Apple stockholder, there is some comfort in knowing the CEO and you dine at the same table (even if your portions differ somewhat in size). 

Pic 04: Iphone 4 is shorter and thicker than the new IPhone 5. Definitely don't recommend you buy the IPhone 5.

All public-company CEOs should be rewarded like this. Maybe then we’d have an economy oriented more toward long-term, sustainable growth than short-term action. 

Pic 05: As of 14th September, 2012, Apple Ltd is worth over US$620 billion. The most valuable company on earth, today.

Pic 06: Short termists me first Bank Leaders of USA. Lloyd Blankfein (Left) and Jamie Dimon (Second from left) control 2 of USA largest but nearly bankrupt banks. Their rewards? Millions of US$ of pay per year for such remarkable talent.

Instead, most are loaded down with bonuses, top-up incentives, stock, options, and as many other freebies as their greedy little arms can hold. Many of the bankers who crashed the economy in 2008 walked away with fortunes, even while their stockholders (and the country) lost their shirts. No wonder what happened, happened. 

Source: 

Brett Arends, 2012, Apple’s CEO on path to first billion, http://www.marketwatch.com/story/apples-ceo-on-path-to-first-billion-2012-09-11-22103456?link=MW_story_insert, September 11.