Apple has offered new CEO Tim Cook restricted stock as an added incentive to stay through 2021. Cook is Steve Jobs' successor.
Freshly minted Apple CEO Tim Cook now has added incentive to
stay with the company for the next decade, according to a new
filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Apple's board of directors has awarded Cook with one million
shares of restricted company stock. He will receive half that block in 2016 and
the remainder in 2021, subject to his "continued employment with Apple through
each such date." Depending on the respective Apple stock prices at those times,
Cook's net worth could increase by hundreds of millions of dollars.
Cook is taking Apple's reins following the departure of
co-founder Steve Jobs, who has wrestled with health issues in recent years.
Cook already served as interim CEO during Jobs' periodic departures on medical
leave, and his work as COO to refine Apple's supply chain means he knows the
company inside and out.
Despite Jobs' role for many years as Apple's very public
face, most analysts seem to believe-at least at this stage-that his departure will
have little material effect on the company's fortunes.
"Apple's product development roadmap stretches into multiple
years ahead and has been shaped both by Jobs and by the organization he built,"
Forrester analyst JP Gownder wrote in an Aug. 24 corporate blog posting. "Jobs'
departure won't affect Apple's product portfolio, quality or competitiveness
for a long time-if ever."
Other analysts concurred on that point.
"Apple has been run by a team of very accomplished
visionaries that includes Tim Cook, Phil Schiller, Jonathan Ive, Scott
Forestal, Ron Johnson and a host of others," Carl Howe, an analyst with the
Yankee Group, wrote in an Aug. 25 blog posting. "Steve was [the] public face of
the company, but we shouldn't think that he was the only one making all the
decisions."
Certainly Cook has been very public about keeping the
company on its current course.
"I want you to be confident that Apple is not going to
change," he wrote in an email to Apple employees as reprinted on Apple-centric
blogs such as 9to5Mac.
"Steve built a company and culture that is unlike any other in the world and we
are going to stay true to that-it is in our DNA."
Over the next few quarters, Apple is expected to release the
next-generation editions of its iPhone and iPad. While the latter has managed
to dominate the tablet market, fending off challenges from the likes of the
Motorola Xoom and Hewlett-Packard's now-defunct TouchPad, the iPhone faces a
significant challenge from a variety of smartphones running Google Android.
Follow Nicholas Kolakowski on Twitter
Nicholas Kolakowski is a staff editor at eWEEK, covering Microsoft and other companies in the enterprise space, as well as evolving technology such as tablet PCs. His work has appeared in The Washington Post, Playboy, WebMD, AARP the Magazine, AutoWeek, Washington City Paper, Trader Monthly, and Private Air. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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