Tim Cook, who has served as Apple’s CEO since shortly before founder Steve Jobs’ death in 2011, has been lauded for his innovative contributions to the company’s operational efficiency. After leaving Compaq to join Apple (AAPL) -) in 1998 at Jobs’ request, Cook helped the founder pull the struggling company out of financial distress by improving its supply chain and manufacturing processes and reducing costs as senior vice president of operations and later COO.
Since taking over as CEO, Cook has overseen the launches of newer Apple offerings like the Apple Watch and wireless AirPods headphones, while the company’s revenue and profit more than doubled over the first 10 years of his leadership.
As of this article’s last update, Apple was the largest company in the world by market cap at about $2.69 trillion, having been the first-ever to pass the $1 trillion mark in 2018. But just how wealthy is the man at the helm of the world’s most valuable company? And how much of Apple does he own?
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What is Tim Cook’s net worth in 2023?
As of late Sept. 2023, Cook’s estimated net worth was around $1.9 billion, making him the 1,590th richest person in the world at that time.
While he is one of the world’s roughly 3,300 billionaires, he is substantially less wealthy than chart-topping executives like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Bernard Arnault, all of whom have net worths in the hundreds of billions due primarily to the fact that they each own substantial amounts of stock in the companies they founded (around 13%, 13%, and 41%, respectively).
How much of Apple’s stock does Tim Cook Own?
Cook, on the other hand, owns only about 837,374 shares, or 0.021% of Apple. If Cook owned 13% of Apple (the approximate ownership percentages Musk and Bezos have in Tesla and Amazon), his net worth would be over $331.5 billion, which would make him the wealthiest person in the world.
Apple’s top institutional shareholders include Vanguard Group (with a 7.94% stake), Berkshire Hathaway (with a 5.86% stake), and BlackRock (with a 4.28% stake).
The only Apple insider with more shares than Cook is Arthur Levinson, who serves as chair of the company’s board of directors and held about 0.029% of the company’s stock as of 2022.
How much does Tim Cook make in a year? Did he take a pay cut in 2023?
In 2022, Cook’s shareholder-approved compensation target was $84 million. His base salary was $3 million, and he was also granted company equity to the tune of $83 million, along with other forms of compensation that ended up totaling around $99 million for the 2022 year.
In 2023, Cook’s compensation target was lowered by the company’s compensation committee to $49 million at the behest of some of Apple’s large institutional shareholders after only 64% of shareholders voted to approve his proposed compensation package. This represents a pay cut of over 40%, although the reduction comes only out of Cook’s stock awards — his base salary remains unchanged at $3 million. According to Apple, Cook supported this compensation change.
Who is the richest person from Apple?
While Apple has experienced unprecedented success as a company and amassed almost $3 trillion in market value, few of its employees have become billionaires. At the time of his death in 2011, founder Steve Jobs was worth around $10.2 billion, but interestingly, most of this wealth was in the form of Disney (DIS) -). The Steven P. Jobs Trust owned over 7% of Disney.
When he passed, Jobs owned about 38.5 million shares or about 0.24% of Apple. This stake now belongs to his widow, Laurene Powell Jobs, and is worth a little under $6.5 billion as of late Sept. 2023. Originally, Jobs owned a much more significant stake in the company he founded, but he sold most of his shares after he was ousted by the board in 1985 and didn’t begin accumulating shares again until he rejoined the company in 1997.
What does Tim Cook do with his money?
Cook owns a condo in Palo Alto, California, as well as a larger home at The Madison Club in La Quinta, California, a community known for its celebrity residents. Cook also donates to charities, including gifts of $5 million and $2 million to two undisclosed organizations during the Covid-19 pandemic. He has also made donations to the American Cancer Society, Doctors Without Borders, PETA, the Humane Society, and other well-known charities.
According to Fortune, Cook actually plans to donate the bulk of his wealth (which will likely be composed primarily of Apple stock) to charity when he passes, setting aside a relatively small amount to fund his nephew’s college education.
What is Tim Cook’s legacy at Apple?
Tim Cook’s influence on Apple’s business over the course of his tenure is hard to overstate. While Steve Jobs is typically considered the “creative genius” behind the brand’s most successful product lines, Cook’s leadership, especially in terms of the company’s operations, has allowed it to grow into the most valuable company in the world and one of the most recognizable and well-regarded brands in the technology space.
Under his leadership, profit and revenue more than doubled in under 10 years, and Apple became the first company to surpass $1 trillion in market capitalization.
Who will replace Cook when he retires?
It is unclear exactly when Cook will retire or who will take the reigns as CEO when he does, but speculation abounds. In 2021, Bloomberg’s Power On newsletter stated that Cook will almost certainly remain CEO through 2025 — when his restricted stock unit award finishes paying out — and that he may remain longer and will likely stick around to oversee the the company’s next major product category launch.
As for who the baton will be passed to, Gurman, who authored the newsletter about the possibility of Cook’s retirement, named four candidates he considered “real possibilities.”
The first name on the list is Jeff Williams, who serves as Apple’s COO, the same role Cook had before Jobs’ death. Williams oversees the company’s operations, including supply-chain management, manufacturing, and hardware development. Next on the list is Greg Joswiak, who has been with the company since 1986 and knows the company “inside and out,” having been in company leadership’s inner circle for decades.
Deirdre O’Brien, Apple’s senior vice president of retail, and John Ternus, senior vice president of hardware engineering, were also named as candidates. Both Williams and Joswiak are only a few years younger than Cook, while O’Brien is about five years his junior. At more than 10 years Cook’s junior, Ternus is by far the youngest of the names Gurman suggested.
Whoever is chosen to serve in Cook's stead will certainly have some big shoes to fill as CEO.
