Apple shovels $400m in stock grants to top execs Apple CEO Tim Cook and his board of directors appear keen on keeping their executive brain trust intact – so much so that they have just shelled out around $400m worth of stock options* to their top talent. "Our executive team is incredibly talented and they are all dedicated to Apple’s continued success," Apple spokesman …
Got the PICTURE YET CrAppleTards?? This filthy GREEDY Company is FIRMLY in the ONE PERCENTERS!! Ought to make you sick, but I find CrApple Fan Boys have neither little sense or community morals. With that big pile of Cash from the yearly Obscene Profits on the backs of the poor underpaid workers of Commie China, most underaged, Greedy CrApple have never paid a single cent of Dividends to their own Stock Holders.
That Face in the 1984 Commerical should have been Steve Jobs, now Tim Cook, instead of illuding to IBM or MSFT!! Now it's confirmed.
CrApple = 1%'ers
Greetings and Salutations....
Well, while I will agree that the 1%s run Apple, that is hardly a surprise. Remember the golden rule - the man with the gold makes the rules.
However, I do have to disagree about your assertion that Apple has never paid dividends to its stockholders. From 1989 through 1997 they did, indeed, pay a few cents per stock in cash to the stockholders. Since then, they have split the stock twice, with its value still staying way up there, so, it is very similar to giving a dividend.
But then, Jobs did have a rather different view of how business should be run, and, Apple reflects that world view.
regards
dave mundt
Umm... Isn't there a difference between options and shares?
Like, if you have options over $400m worth of shares, you have to stump up the $400m in cash to actually get the shares and you only make money if the value of the shares go up? So, for this to be worth $400m to the people named, the shares have to go from being worth the $400m they have to pay for them to $800m in value.
And if the company's share price does go from $400/share to $800/share as a result of their work (is that a case of increasing the value of the company from $400b to $800b???), well, they deserve their place in the 1%'ers.
Of course, if they don't to that, they get nothing.
Is that these options give you the right to buy shares at a fixed price later. So if you have the option to buy for example 400k in shares today then the share price goes up, for arguments sake lets say it doubles, then yes you only need to stump up 400k but get 800k worth.
However i may be wrong but i understand options themselves are sometimes tradable - you can sell some to someone else.
In common with many other examples of BigCorp's managerati throughout big business they are so dedicated to the company that they have to have large amounts of wonga thrown at them in addition to their already sky-high salaries.
"We're reasonably confident that some honey was poured Ive's way" - surely this would have been declared to the SEC and made publicly available ?
I'm not so sure. I had read Ive wanted his kids brought up in the UK and Apple said it wasn't vialble for him to hold his position outside of California...
Obviously, most of the posters don't understand how stock options work. If the board grants you 100,000 options with a vesting date that starts today with Apple closing at, say, $400, that means that what is called the "strike price" is $400 per share. That means when you have vested in those shares and you want to exercise them (convert them to actual stock), YOU PAY $40M to Apple. For those options to be of any value to you, the market price needs to be ABOVE $400 per share. So suppose they vest in a year, and at that point the stock is worth $300 per share. Then those options are worthless and you'd ignore them. But suppose at that point the stock is worth $500 per share? Then, if you want to exercise them, you do what is called a "cashless transaction" where Apple takes those 100,000 shares, sells them for $500 per share ($50M), pays for the options ($40M), and gives you the net ($10M). The IRS makes you pay Capital Gains taxes on that net $10M. So no, these guys are not being handed $40M-$60M. They are being handed an incentive to work to increase the value of the stock for the benefit of all shareholders. So in this example, if the stock price goes up from $400 per share, they can make money. If the stock price drops below $400 per share, then they don't.
So if they're not options, but rather are "restricted stock units", that means you are paying out irrespective of stock performance. *unless the whole company goes "pop"*
You get more if the stock goes up, but if it drops by 50%, the execs will still get bucket loads of cash. Nice deal........
I'm not an Apple shareholder, but if I was, I would have asking why the grant wasn't based on options - but perhaps the Apple board think the shareholders are idiots and won't spot the difference (or don't care even if they do).......
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