Apple CEO Tim Cook agrees to 40% cut in his annual salary

Apple CEO Tim Cook recommended the company cut its pay this year after shareholders rebelled.

The world’s biggest tech company said it would cut Cook’s target compensation package to $49 million, 40% short of its 2022 compensation target and about half of the total compensation of $99.4 million that Cook received last year.

The vast majority of Cook’s 2022 compensation – around 75% – was tied to company stock, with half of that dependent on stock price performance.

But shareholders voted against Cook’s salary package after Apple’s shares fell nearly 27% last year. The vote is not mandatory, but the board’s compensation committee said Cook requested the reduction.

“The compensation committee weighed shareholder feedback, Apple’s exceptional performance and a recommendation from Mr. Cook to adjust his compensation in light of the feedback received,” the company said in its annual proxy statement released on Thursday.

This year, the executive’s stock award target was reduced to US$40 million. About $30 million, or three quarters, is tied to stock price performance.

Cook’s base salary of $3 million will remain the same, the company said, as will a $6 million bonus.

The board said it believes Cook’s new pay package is “responsive to shareholder feedback, while continuing to align pay with performance and recognizing Mr. Cook”.

The chief technology officer, who has run Apple since 2011, is estimated to have a personal fortune of $1.7 billion, according to Forbes.

Apple’s stock price, like other tech companies, plummeted last year as the coronavirus lockdown closed some of its factories in China. Supply chain bottlenecks and fears that a global economic slowdown would hurt demand also squeezed their inventories.

In January last year, the tech giant became the first publicly traded company to reach a market capitalization of $3 trillion, but has lost nearly $1 billion of that since.