Tim Cook's 2020 pay of $14.7M is about average for a S&P 500 CEO

Apple CEO Tim Cook's compensation for heading up the most valuable company in the United States is relatively modest, placed in 171st position in rankings of S&P 500 CEO earnings.

Apple is at the top of the Standard & Poor's 500 rankings in terms of market capitalization but CEO Tim Cook's direct pay from the company is far lower than many others in the list.

Compiling the compensation data for 416 CEOs from the 500 companies on that list, Tim Cook's total pay for 2000 was $14,769,259, according to the Wall Street Journal. Despite seeming high, and also rising 28% from his 2019 compensation, this only puts Cook in position 171 on the list.

While the rankings indicate Cook is getting paid similarly to other major CEOs, it's not the entire story. Given that many CEOs, including Cook, are stockholders in the company they lead, their salary can become only a small part of their total overall income.

For example, a similar report from Bloomberg in 2019 reported Cook's pay at $133.7 million for the year. While his starting salary for that year was $3 million and he also had $7.7 million in bonuses and $884,000 in perks, he also received $122.2 million in stock awards.

Such stock earnings mean that Cook and other CEOs can earn far more than their salary. In Cook's case, his personal net worth crossed the $1 billion mark in August 2020.

Cook trails far behind Paycom CEO Chad R. Richison, who topped the list with $211 million in total pay, followed by Shantanu Narayen of Adobe in third with $45 million, the $23 million earned by Daniel H. Schulman of Paypal in 49th place, and IBM CEO Arvind Krishna in 122nd with $17 million.

At the other end of the scale, Warren Buffet is in 413rd place with $380,328, Jack Dorsey of Twitter is in 414 with a token $1 salary, and Elon Musk is in last with $0.

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17 Comments

bvgk 16 comments · 14 Years

About 3 years ago

why is not just $500k , which would have been 5 or 6 times average Apple employee pay.
Tim has an opportunity to set an example for other CEOs.

lkrupp 10521 comments · 19 Years

bvgk said:

why is not just $500k , which would have been 5 or 6 times average Apple employee pay.
Tim has an opportunity to set an example for other CEOs.

Whatever. Until otherwise this is a capitalist economy, not a socialist one where everyone’s pay is regulated according to some bullshit ‘fairness’ doctrine conjured up by god knows what committee.

lkrupp said:

bvgk said:

why is not just $500k , which would have been 5 or 6 times average Apple employee pay.
Tim has an opportunity to set an example for other CEOs.

Whatever. Until otherwise this is a capitalist economy, not a socialist one where everyone’s pay is regulated according to some bullshit ‘fairness’ doctrine conjured up by god knows what committee.

i am talking about setting an example for other CEOs.
it's not right on the part of CEOs to make 1000+ times average employee pay .... otherwise, our communist president and his party are asking for higher and higher taxes in the name of fairness.
so, CEOs like Tim can set an example and not give an excuse to the politicians from dismantling the whole system.

sflocal 6135 comments · 16 Years

bvgk said:

lkrupp said:

bvgk said:

why is not just $500k , which would have been 5 or 6 times average Apple employee pay.
Tim has an opportunity to set an example for other CEOs.

Whatever. Until otherwise this is a capitalist economy, not a socialist one where everyone’s pay is regulated according to some bullshit ‘fairness’ doctrine conjured up by god knows what committee.

i am talking about setting an example for other CEOs.
it's not right on the part of CEOs to make 1000+ times average employee pay .... otherwise, our communist president and his party are asking for higher and higher taxes in the name of fairness.
so, CEOs like Tim can set an example and not give an excuse to the politicians from dismantling the whole system.

Cry me a river. If anything, this shows that most other CEO's are OVERPAID. I have zero problems with TC's compensation. Under his leadership, I loaded up on AAPL and am beyond grateful. Did you not do that?

Tim Cook's tax situation is not the problem. Our government's never-ending thirst to spend more than it receives is the problem. Our government does not have a revenue problem. It has a spending problem, regardless of who is in the White House.

sdw2001 17459 comments · 23 Years

bvgk said:

why is not just $500k , which would have been 5 or 6 times average Apple employee pay.
Tim has an opportunity to set an example for other CEOs.

I don't see what "setting an example" would accomplish. It's not like Tim Cook making that kind of money affects Apple's pay scale. That's what drives me crazy....yes, some CEO pay is obscene. But even if you have someone making 100m and they cut their pay to 500K, what does that accomplish? Take Apple. They have 147,000 employees. If Tim Cook earned zero dollars and every dime of his salary and stock options went to employees, each employee would get less than $1000 raise. If he just gave up his salary, each employee would get $100.

This process can be applied to any business. The CEOs making obscene money run businesses that have tens of thousands of employees. Even if CEOs followed suit with Tim's hypothetical "example," what it is accomplishing...good optics? Making people feel better?

sflocal:

Tim Cook's tax situation is not the problem. Our government's never-ending thirst to spend more than it receives is the problem. Our government does not have a revenue problem. It has a spending problem, regardless of who is in the White House.
Yes. Exactly. Neither party cares about debt and deficits. Worse, there is a movement to cause inflation by overspending because in addition to reducing purchasing power, it reduces the value of the outstanding debt.