Four out of the top five highest paid executives in the United States work at Apple, and believe it or not, none of the four are named Tim Cook!
Apple’s Bob Mansfield, Bruce Sewell, Jeff Williams and Peter Oppenheimer were all among the top corporate earners in 2012, according to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission data cited by Bloomberg on Monday. Most of their pay came from stock-based compensation rather than base salary.
Mansfield took the top spot in the group, hauling in a cool $85.5 million in 2012. Mansfield has announced last June that he was retiring, but he was eventually convinced to stay at the company as the senior vice president of its Technologies group.
Next highest paid on the Apple roster was Sewell who, as the company’s general counsel and senior vice president of Legal and Government Affairs, earned $69 million in 2012, snagging third among executives on the S&P 500.
Sewell edged out Williams, who serves as the company’s senior vice president of Operations, by $300,000. Williams had a $68.7 million payday last year.
Number five on the S&P 500 executive list was Oppenheimer, Apple’s chief financial officer. His total 2012 compensation amounted to a mere $68.6 million.
Apple’s directors are using the compensation strategy in an attempt to keep intact the team that transformed the company into the most valuable technology company under late co-founder Steve Jobs.
“It’s a retention strategy to keep the key executives who were present in the Steve Jobs era,” said Greg Sterling, an analyst at San Francisco-based Opus Research told Bloomberg. “They want to be sure the actual talents that they bring to the company are retained, and also from a perception standpoint to retain confidence in the leadership.”
The top corporate earner was Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle, who earned $96.2 million. While Apple CEO Cook earned “only” $4.17 million in 2012, observers shouldn’t feel too bad for him, as he probably cried himself to sleep atop the $378 million restricted stock package he netted in 2011.
