Salon.com > Tim Cook

Apple CEO: Board says $510 million in stock is enough

Thu, 27 Dec 2012 17:37:00 +0000

Apple CEO Tim Cook got a relatively modest $4.2 million in pay for the latest fiscal year, after the company's board set him up with stock now worth $510 million for taking the reins in 2011.

Cook's pay for fiscal 2012, which ended in September, consisted of $1.4 million in salary, a bonus of $2.8 million, and $17,000 in company contributions to his 401(k) account and life insurance premiums, according to a filing.

Apple Inc.'s board saw no need to give Cook additional shares in 2012 after the sign-on grant of 1 million shares in 2011. Half of those shares vest in 2016 and the other half in 2021. A lot could happen to the value of the shares before Cook can cash them out, but the sign-on grant made him -at least on paper- the highest-paid U.S. CEO in 2011.

Cook did vest into shares worth $140 million in 2012. Those shares were granted earlier, when he was chief operating officer. He had been acting CEO for a while before the death of company co-founder Steve Jobs in October of 2011.

Bringing the Apple jobs back home

Fri, 07 Dec 2012 12:45:00 +0000

Tim Cook may not be Steve Jobs, but the new Apple CEO proved this week that he is just as good as the old Apple CEO at getting the media to snap to attention. One carefully calibrated bomb dropped toward the end of a humongous Bloomberg BusinessWeek interview -- that Apple plans to spend $100 million to bring some Mac manufacturing back to the United States in 2013 -- rocketed around the world, from Twitter to the New York Times, in less time than it takes to run down the battery on your iPhone. Who needs Steve Jobs? Real jobs are coming back to America!

The timing was perfect for a growing cohort of economy-watchers eager to make the argument that globalization's malign impact on the American worker has hit high tide and is finally beginning to ebb. Just a week ago, the Atlantic presciently published "The Insourcing Boom," a fascinating in-depth story by Charles Fishman investigating General Electric's decision to start up new appliance assembly lines in the U.S. And "GE is not alone," writes Fishman, arguing that an increasing number of American corporations are discovering it makes economic sense to bring the factories back home. Apple's news was the exclamation point at the end of the Atlantic's sentence.

Apple to resume US manufacturing

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 14:18:00 +0000

Apple is bringing a branch of its manufacturing back within U.S. borders, CEO Tim Cook announced in interviews with Bloomberg Businessweek and NBC's "Rock Center." An existing Mac computer line will be exclusively manufactured in the U.S. said Cook, who took over as CEO from Steve Jobs in August 2011.

Last year, President Obama candidly asked Steve Jobs about the outsourcing of almost all Apple manufacturing jobs overseas.“Those jobs aren’t coming back,” Jobs reportedly told the president. But, according to Cook's announcement, Apple has not abandoned American manufacturing.

"We’ve been working for years on doing more and more in the United States,” the CEO told NBC's Brian Williams. Cook told Businessweek that Apple -- the biggest company in the world by market value -- had a responsibility to create U.S. jobs. He did, however, note that the U.S. education system is failing to produce enough people with the skills needed for modern manufacturing processes.

Apple’s apology tour

Fri, 28 Sep 2012 20:00:00 +0000

After reading Apple CEO Tim Cook's groveling apology for the manifold imperfections of Apple Maps I had half a mind to return to Berkeley's Apple store and deliver a stern I-told-you-so to the employee with whom I sparred last week.

But I soon thought better of my rash plan, for fear that an apoplectic Steve Jobs may even now be returning from the grave to wreak fiery vengeance on his simpering, pusillanimous heirs. Apologizing is not the Apple way, and the revered founder is surely pissed. Best to lay low and avoid becoming collateral damage.

Besides, the discourse over Apple Maps has moved far beyond the simple outrage that Apple's newest iPhone and new mobile operating system upgrade force upon users an app that the New York Times' David Pogue, a writer not known his harsh stance on Apple products, said "may be the most embarrassing, least usable piece of software Apple has ever unleashed." No, today's debate centers on whether Tim Cook was wrong to apologize!