Angela Ahrendts, Apple senior vice-president of retail and online businesses, was awarded $82.6 million in 2014. Photo / Getty Images
Angela Ahrendts, Apple senior vice-president of retail and online businesses, was awarded $82.6 million in 2014. Photo / Getty Images
Five Apple workers who were paid US$281 million ($366 million) last year are among the 100 highest-paid executives in the United States.
They're worth every penny, according to the Bloomberg Pay Index, the first daily ranking of US executives' salaries.
Chief executive officer Tim Cook, senior vice-presidents Eduardo Cue, AngelaAhrendts and Jeffrey Williams, and former chief financial officer Peter Oppenheimer have a combined pay package equivalent to about 1 per cent of the company's economic profit, according to the ranking.
The pay-for-performance measure used in the Bloomberg ranking is calculated using an executive's pay as a percentage of a company's economic profit, which is defined as after-tax net operating profit minus its cost of capital. A smaller percentage indicates a better return on each dollar paid to an executive.
The five Apple executives are better bargains for investors than 94 of the 100 highest-paid executives, says the ranking. There are 91 execu-tives in the index who receive a larger percentage of their company's eco-nomic profit individually than Apple's executives do as a group. Thirty-six executives worked at companies that produced a negative economic profit.
Ahrendts was awarded $82.6 million last year, making her the highest-paid executive at Apple and the 10th-highest in the US. After running London-based fashion retailer Burberry Group Plc for six years, she joined Apple to oversee its retail and online businesses in May 2014, becoming the first woman on the company's management team.
Her pay, which included a sign-on bonus and a make-whole grant for awards left behind at Burberry, is equal to 0.3 percent of Apple's $28.6 billion three-year average profit.
Oppenheimer, retiring after 18 years with Apple, was paid $74.5 mill-ion, or 0.3 per cent of economic profit. Cook received $65.2 million and delivered the best pay-for-perform-ance among US CEOs.
