Apple CEO wraps up a decade in charge with $1b award

Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive officer, will this week collect the 10th and final tranche of the pay deal he received a decade ago after he took over the top job from co-founder Steve Jobs.

The haul consists of about 5 million shares worth roughly $US750 million ($1.04 billion), according to calculations by Bloomberg News. Part of the payout is contingent on Apple’s stock return over the past three years surpassing at least two-thirds of companies in the S&P 500 – a threshold the iPhone maker cleared by a wide margin.

Apple’s soaring stock price has allowed the 60-year-old Cook to collect top payouts year after year and made him a billionaire. He currently has a net worth of about $US1.5 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The Apple executive said in 2015 that he plans to give most of his fortune away and has already donated millions of dollars worth of Apple shares.

Cook initially joined Apple in the late 1990s after stints at Compaq and IBM. He quickly became Apple’s top operations executive and the No. 2 to Jobs. As great as Jobs was at dreaming up the next major product, Cook was an expert at making those devices happen, manufacturing and distribution-wise.

Revenue doubled

When he succeeded Jobs 10 years ago, some observers doubted that the technocratic Cook could match his predecessor’s star power and continue Apple’s successful streak. But on his watch, the company’s revenue has more than doubled and its shares returned more than 1100 per cent, pushing the market value above $US2 trillion.

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He’s overseen significant expansion into online services, driven major acquisitions like Beats and Intel’s cellular-modem unit, a push into custom chips and technologies, wearables like AirPods and the Apple Watch, and major expansions to the iPhone and iPad lines.

His tenure, however, did face hiccups such as a failed launch of its own Maps app in 2012, which was largely rectified, criticism over the company’s tax payments and tax deal with Ireland, and a public spat with the US over smartphone encryption.