Consultants Urge Apple Shareholders to Oppose $99 Million Bonus to Tim Cook - Report

Last year, Apple’s CEO Tim Cook received $82 million worth of Apple stock, a $3 million salary and a $12 million bonus. This was Cook's first payout package since receiving a $750 million bonus after replacing Steve Jobs as head of the company.

Consulting firm Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) has recommended Apple shareholders to block Tim Cook's $99 million compensation payment, Bloomberg reported on Thursday.

Analysts noted that the planned bonus causes “significant concerns regarding the design and magnitude of the equity award.” According to ISS experts, the compensation looks excessive in comparison with payments in other companies. ISS was said to have been urging shareholders to block payments for Cook over the past seven years.

“Half of Mr. Cook’s 2021 award is time-based and does not depend on satisfying performance criteria such as increases in Apple’s share price,” the report says.

Meanwhile, the amount of compensation, in turn, was calculated based on the results achieved by the company. Apple became the first public company with a market value of over $3 trillion last year and its stock has risen 191.83 percent in the last three years alone, and since Cook took over the company in August 2011, the company’s share price has risen 1,200 percent, according to CNBC.

The rules applied to private companies allow shareholders to express their agreement or disagreement with such payments, but their feedback is advisory in nature and it’s not necessary to comply with it.

Over the last year, Cook earned almost $100 million, which is 570 percent more than a year earlier, and 1447 times more than his average salary in the company, according to Apple’s filing for the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).