Top Apple execs earn nearly $22M each in vested stock

Apple's annual bonus structure paid out for seven top executives last week with the vesting of batches of restricted stock grants worth up to nearly $22 million.

Reported in U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings made public on Tuesday, Apple COO Jeff Williams, SVP of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller, SVP of Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue, SVP of Software Engineering Craig Federighi and SVP of Hardware Engineering Dan Riccio saw awarded stock grants vest on April 1.

Each executive gained batches of 40,954 and 36,108 common stock shares from Apple RSU incentive plans awarded on Oct. 17, 2014 and Oct. 5, 2015, respectively. Collectively, the shares were worth $13 million at the end of trading on Tuesday.

Cue, Riccio, Schiller and Williams received an additional 53,055 shares worth just under $9 million from an award granted on March 3, 2014.

Following standard operating procedures, Apple withheld 60,626 shares from awards received by Riccio and Schiller, 66,613 shares from Cue's award and 67,507 shares from Williams to satisfy tax laws. The company did the same for Maestri, Ahrendts and Federighi, withholding a respective 37,940, 38,834 and 39,248 shares.

As they did last year, Cue and Schiller shuffled a respective 63,670 and 69,491 shares to family trusts following last week's vesting.

Apple executives regularly benefit from the company's continued fiscal performance, often seeing their RSU awards fully vest, or effectively double. In 2016, however, Apple's top brass left some proverbial money on the table when the company finished in the 83rd percentile of companies listed on the S&P 500.