Apple No.2 becomes best paid woman in America
And she gets paid TWICE as much as boss Tim Cook
APPLE retail boss Angela Ahrendts earned £18m in 2017 – to become the bestpaid woman in America.
The 57-year-old, a senior vicepresident at the firm and a former fashion boss, also made almost twice as much as chief executive Tim Cook.
Ahrendts, who once ran UK fashion giant Burberry, pocketed a £760,000 salary, £14.9m in stock awards, £2.3m in performance pay and £65,000 in expenses, according to the company’s filings for 2017.
Other top executives named were finance chief Luca Maestri, hardware presidents Johny Srouji and Dan Riccio, and general counsel Bruce Sewell, who also earned about £18m.
By comparison, the documents said Cook took home £9.5m.
This included a £2.3m salary and £7.2m in bonuses and perks.
His pay is largely linked to Apple’s performance on stock markets. The filing does not include a share award to Cook of about £66.4m, agreed in 2011.
Apple said: ‘Our executive compensation programme is designed to reward performance in a simple and effective way.
‘It reflects the unparalleled size, scope and success of Apple’s business, and the importance of our executive officers operating as a high-performing team, while focusing on key measures of profitability and the creation of shareholder value. We believe the compensation paid to our named executive officers for 2017 appropriately reflects and rewards their contributions to our performance.’
Meanwhile, it also emerged Cook, 57, will now be flying privately everywhere he goes.
‘As an additional security measure for Mr Cook, the board requires that he use private aircraft for all business and personal travel,’ the company said. ‘This policy was implemented in 2017 in the interests of security and efficiency based on our global profile and the highly visible nature of Mr Cook’s role. ‘We do not consider the security measures to be a personal benefit, but, rather, reasonable and necessary expenses for the benefit of Apple.’
Cook ran up a £70,000 bill for travelling on private aircraft on non- business trips over the financial year, Apple said.
The disclosure comes after the company’s shares have risen by 46pc in the past year.
It stunned Wall Street with its iPhone sales for the three months to September, which totalled more than £40bn.
The figures confounded analysts, who predicted sales of older models would fall off a cliff as the release of iPhone X and iPhone 8 handsets approached.
Yet Apple sold more than 46.6m iPhones overall in the period, up from 45.5m during the same time in 2016. Sales so far of its £1,000 iPhone X model have yet to be confirmed, with analysts and retailers predicting they have not been as strong as anticipated due to its price.
Meanwhile, Apple is facing multiple lawsuits in the US amid accusations it defrauded iPhone users. Eight classaction claims say it slowed devices used by millions of people without warning to compensate for poor battery performance. The tweak may have led iPhone owners to pursue misguided attempts to resolve issues over the last year, the lawsuits say.
It comes after Apple acknowledged software updates included a feature ‘to smooth out’ power supply from batteries that are cold, old or low on charge.