In a new SEC filing published this week it was revealed that Apple CEO, Tim Cook, will not be taking part in a dividend recently offered to the firm’s own employees who own RSUs – (Restricted Stock Units) — a dividend expected to be worth $75 Million.
On May 24, 2012, the Compensation Committee (the “Committee”) of the Board of Directors of Apple Inc. (the “Company”) approved amendments to each outstanding and unvested restricted stock unit award granted by the Company to its employees (other than Timothy D. Cook, the Company’s Chief Executive Officer). The amendments provide that if the Company pays an ordinary cash dividend on its common stock, each award will be credited with an amount equal to the per-share cash dividend paid by the Company, multiplied by the total number of restricted stock units subject to the award that are outstanding immediately prior to the record date for such dividend. The amounts that are credited to each award are referred to as “dividend equivalents.” Any dividend equivalents credited to an award will be subject to the same vesting, payment and other terms and conditions as the unvested restricted stock units to which the dividend equivalents relate. Depending on the domicile of the employee, accumulated dividend equivalents will either be paid in cash or used to offset employee taxes due upon vesting of the restricted stock units.
According to the report, this employee dividend will see those who do own RSUs in Apple receive the same $2.65 quarterly pay-out, that public shareholders are also set to receive in the coming months.
Tim Cook, however, will not take part in this dividend:
At Mr. Cook’s request, none of his restricted stock units will participate in dividend equivalents. Assuming a quarterly dividend of $2.65 per share over the vesting periods of his 1.125 million outstanding restricted stock units, Mr. Cook will forego approximately $75 million in dividend equivalent value.
News of Tim’s decision to not take part in the dividend, follows the CEO having previously been awarded 1 Million new shares in Apple when he first took up the position at the firm last year.
At the time of this announcement, AAPL was trading at $383.85 per share, which meant Cook’s new stake in the company was worth approximately $383 Million.
Today, AAPL is trading at around $560 per share.
According to Bloomberg – because of this, (and other factors), Tim Cook was America‘s top-earning CEO for last year, beating that of Oracle’s Larry Ellison ($77.6 Million), J.C. Penney’s Ronald Johnson ($53.3 Million), and Viacom Inc’s Philippe Dauman ($43.1 Million), among others.
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