As the shares of the tech giant Apple Inc. reached a historic high, the Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook has joined the billionaires club. His wealth was calculated by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index recently, which analyzed that his wealth had surpassed the $1 billion mark. This makes him the one of the very few non-founder CEOs to be a part of the elite billionaires club.
The shares of Apple rose around 5 per cent last week and the company is inching towards becoming the first company ever to be valued at $2 trillion. Remarkably, Apple also became the first company to touch $1 trillion in valuation two years back.
Cook reached this milestone based on the shares of Apple that he owns in addition to the compensation he is paid – he owns 847,969 shares of the California-based company and his compensation was a total of $125 million last year.
Under Cook, Apple became the world’s most valuable publicly traded company, surpassing the oil company owned by Saudi – Saudi Aramco.
Who is Tim Cook?
A very influential person in Silicon Valley, Tim Cook became the CEO of Apple in 2011, when its maverick founder Steve Jobs was unwell. Since he took over as the chief of the technology company, he has helped double the profits and revenue of the organization.
Before he became CEO, Cook served as the Chief Operating Officer under Steve Jobs. He joined Apple in 1998 as a senior Vice-President for worldwide operations.
In 2014, Cook came out as gay, becoming the first Fortune 500 CEO to do so. In 2015, he pledged to donate most of his wealth to charity.
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