Technology companies have been attracting money lately, filling their bosses’ pockets. It’s been nine years since Steve Cook was handed over to Apple by Steve Jobs, and it was probably a good move. Apple’s stock price rose five percent last week, which is not so surprising in itself, but the company, which began operating in the garage, raised its market valuation to almost two trillion dollars.
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As a result, the CEO of the company joined the club of dollar billionaires according to the calculations of the billionaire Index from Bloomberg.
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Two years ago, Apple was the first company to exceed the trillion-dollar market valuation, and another record is likely to follow soon. “This technology cycle was much bigger and longer than I thought,” he told pro Bloomberg Hussein Kanji, partner at venture capital firm Hoxton Ventures. “Apple has become the largest money generator in history,” he continued.
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Only CEO, not founder
Tim Cook differs from other bosses of technology giants, as he is not the company’s founder or large shareholder, but only the CEO. Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, who founded their companies, still hold strong shareholder positions in them, and both have exceeded $ 100 billion. Most of Tim Cook’s estimated assets come from bonuses paid out by companies in the form of shares.
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He got them, for example, for mastering a complex supply chain, and received a large sum for the first day as CEO. Unless there is a sudden drop in Apple’s share prices, he will receive a ninth bonus this month, which includes 560,000 shares. After deducting taxes, this bonus would add another $ 100 million to Cook’s assets.
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It currently owns nearly 850,000 shares, representing about 0.02 percent, valued at about $ 375 million. His previous sale of shares, dividends and other compensation, according to Bloomberg’s calculations, bring him another 650 million dollars. In 2019, Tim Cook was the second highest paid CEO in the United States after Elon Musk.
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Rise of the Titans
Many analysts feared that Steve Jobs’ death foreshadowed a slow descent and subsequent end of Apple. And while the company hasn’t presented anything as groundbreaking as the iPhone in years, Apple has continued to thrive. At the end of July this year, Apple also became the most valuable publicly traded company when it overtook the Saudi oil company Saudi Aramco.
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The coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated the rapid growth of technology companies. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, recently reached the $ 100 billion mark, joining the pair of the richest men in the world – Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates.
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Amazon has doubled its profit in the last quarter compared to the same period in 2019. Facebook again saw the number of active users per month increase by 12 percent to 2.7 billion people.
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According to the British BBC The five largest technology companies in the United States, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Facebook and Microsoft, have a market valuation of 30 percent of US GDP. Compared to 2018, the share almost doubled.
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