New Report Attests Apple Executives Might Not Be Paid Enough

Apple is the world’s most valuable company, with a market capitalization of around $879 billion. But while the Cupertino tech giant has a lot of billions, it doesn’t have many billionaires.

That’s an interesting quirk revealed by Bloomberg on Tuesday. In fact, among Apple’s senior leadership, there’s only one person known to have at least $1 billion. That’s Chairman Art Levinson, who for the record, has made most of his fortune from his time and investments in other tech firms.

Apple’s current CEO, Tim Cook, has a net worth estimated to be around $600 million. Which is, according to Bloomberg, relatively “restrained” compared to just how large and rich Apple is.

Again, besides Levinson, there’s not a single current executive at Apple that breaks the $1 billion mark. Which is a fact that seems pretty weird at first.

It’s a trend that’s pretty apparent among Apple insiders, per the Bloomberg Pay Index, which ranks the cost of executive compensation against economic profit. Apple’s executives were the lowest among the 200 Americans firms with the best-paid bosses as of last fiscal year.

Late Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs, on the other hand, was a billionaire — but his fortune was still smaller than the CEO of Apple’s primary competitor at the time: Microsoft’s Bill Gates.

On top of that, a good portion of Jobs’ net worth came from other endeavors, including his part in founding Pixar (which went on to be acquired by Disney in 2006).

Cofounder Steve Wozniak, on the other hand, is not a billionaire. He’s famously said that “ownership is not something I think about,” and his net worth is estimated to be somewhere in the millions. The late widow of Steve Jobs, Laurene Powell Jobs, is a billionaire — but she has no role in the Cupertino tech firm.

That’s in stark contrast to the culture of Silicon Valley at large, where it’s not very hard to find billionaire tech executives. Tech fortunes make up about a fifth of Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index, as the publications reports.

And, as AppleInsider points out, it’s a far cry from Apple’s suppliers. The founders and CEOs of major Apple partners — including Foxconn, Lens Technology, and Quanta Computer — are all on Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index.

Apple is the world’s richest company and is largely predicted to become the first firm valued at $1 trillion globally. Yet, despite its wealth and power, Apple has no current figurehead billionaire — unlike Microsoft, Amazon, Tesla, Facebook and other high-profile contemporaries.

All in all, Bloomberg’s report suggests that the cost of Apple leadership is nothing short of a bargain for its shareholders. That’s largely due to a relatively balanced pay structure and the fact that Apple’s wealth is spread among its employees and its third-party partners.