Apple shareholders voted Friday to approve a virtually $100 million compensation bundle for CEO Tim Cook dinner — signaling their assist regardless of an advisory agency’s stance that the awards were a tad excessive.
Cook’s lucrative pay package for Apple’s 2021 fiscal year requires $98.73 million in complete compensation — together with greater than $82 million in inventory awards, a $12 million bonus for hitting inside efficiency targets and a $3 million base wage.
The Apple boss’s deal was 1,447 occasions bigger than the pay bundle provided to the tech big’s common worker.
The vote in favor of Cook dinner’s pay bundle was largely symbolic. Whereas shareholders in public firms are allowed to weigh in on government compensation, the votes are nonbinding — which means Apple might have moved ahead with the plan even when shareholders had voted to reject it.
Nonetheless, a rejection would have marked a major rebuke for Apple.
In February, Institutional Shareholder Providers, an advisory agency, argued shareholders ought to vote down the compensation. The agency mentioned that parts of Cook dinner’s payday, comparable to $712,000 for personal jet journey, have been excessive in comparison with these provided by comparable firms.
“There are vital issues concerning the design and magnitude of the fairness award made to CEO Cook dinner,” ISS mentioned in a report forward of the shareholder assembly.
Apple outlined the pay plan in an SEC submitting made public in January — noting the corporate’s inventory value and income had surged below Cook dinner’s management. Cook dinner acquired an fairness award for the primary time since he was named CEO in 2011.
Cook dinner’s pay marked a major enhance in comparison with the earlier 12 months, when he earned the comparatively paltry sum of $14.8 million in compensation.
Shareholders additionally voted to substantiate Apple’s board of administrators and permitted a proposal pushing the corporate to conduct an impartial civil rights audit of its inside insurance policies and practices. In the meantime, shareholders rejected proposals calling for enhanced transparency about Apple’s plans to handle gender and racial pay gaps and issues about using alleged pressured labor in its provide chain.
With Put up wires
