Apple paid its top five executives a total of $281 million last year. The same executives are among the 100 highest-paid executives in the United States. This report comes from the Bloomberg Pay Index.
The list includes Tim Cook (CEO), Angela Ahrendts (SVP), Eddy Cue, Jeffery Williams and Peter Oppenheimer. The latter was Apple’s former chief financial officer. The five executives’ combined pay package was the equivalent of 1% of the company’s total economic profits.
Apple’s executives and their earnings
Hudson Square Research analyst Dan Ernst said the late Steve Jobs was a one-of-a-kind leader, although Apple’s current team is also quite deserving. Bloomberg’s ranking of the pay-for-performance measure is calculated using each executive’s pay as a percentage of Apple’s profit. Their rankings are defined as after-tax net operating profits, sans the capital cost. Smaller percentages show a better return on each dollar paid to executives.
All five Apple executives are better bargains for investors than the other 94 executives on the list. There are about 91 executives who received a larger portion of their companies’ economic profits individually compared to Apple’s executives. Thirty-six executives also worked for companies that aren’t even turning a profit.
A look at Ahrendts’ and Oppenheimer’s earnings
Angela Ahrendts earned $82.6 million last year, a number that made her the highest paid executive at Apple. It also made her the 10th highest paid executive in the United States. She came to Apple after running British fashion house Burberry. Her pay included a sign-on bonus and make-whole grant for awards left at Burberry.
Peter Oppenheimer retired last year after spending 18 years with the Cupertino-based tech giant. He earned a total of $74.5 million. Tim Cook earned a total of $65.2 million. He also delivered the best pay-for-performance among all U.S.-based CEOs.
Apple is one of the most important tech companies of our time. The company truly transformed the way people think of mobile technology.
