The unprecedented financial success Apple has seen since Tim Cook took over as chief executive makes him the best corporate leader in America when it comes to pay versus performance, according to a new Bloomberg executive ranking.
Cook's $65.2 million in 2014 compensation amounts to just 0.2 percent of Apple's $28.6 billion "economic profit" since 2012, Bloomberg notes. No other chief executive boasts a ratio equal to or lower than Cook's.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella came second at 0.4 percent, while Exxon Mobil's Rex Tillerson booked a third-place finish with 0.7 percent.
"Apple is just unbelievably killing it," Hudson Square Research analyst Dan Ernst told the publication. "A good leader like Cook builds a team around him that can do the job."
Most of Cook's top lieutenants are longtime Apple veterans, but he has reached outside the family for some key hires. He brought in Lisa Jackson from the Environmental Protection Agency to oversee environmental initiatives, and lured then-Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts to come aboard as senior vice president in charge of retail.
The rankings track the top 100 highest-paid public company executives, regardless of title. Order is determined using the executives' pay as a percentage of their company's after-tax net profit, minus cost of capital, which Bloomberg refers to as economic profit.