Jan 24

Bright Future For Apple, Brighter For Jobs

When a company goes down, it's the fault of its CEO, first of all. When things go as great as possible, the CEO deserves to get rewarded for its efforts. Steve Jobs got through the first part already, since he had to quite Apple some time ago, and the company wasn't doing extremely well at that time (anyway, this was only one of the causes that lead to its departure). In the meantime, he got back and simply unleashed magic at Apple, as we were able to see in the last financial report, for example. Now, let's see what's in store for him...
Steve Jobs comic

According to a recent statement, because "continued leadership is critical to the Company, the [Apple] Compensation Committee is considering additional compensation arrangements for him [Steve Jobs]", and they are completely right. Why? If you forgot, Jobs has a personal portofolio of 5.5 million Apple shares belonging to the common stock, but in the last decade, since he got back to Apple, in 1997, he never sold at least a single share.

In fiscal 2007, all that Jobs got from Apple was his $1 annual salary. $1, not $1 million, simply $1! Well, the company awarded him an aircraft back in 1999, an equity grant in 2003, vested in full in 2006, as well as two stock option grants, in 2000 and 2001. In fact, the grants were both cancelled in March 2003, when Jobs received a grant of 5 million shares of restricted stock.

Those 5 million shares became 10 million when Appl's stock split in 2005, and the best part is that their value increased 8 times between 2003 and 2006, from $7.47 to no less than $64.66, on the vesting date, in March.

Currently, the value of Apple's shares is slowly descending towards $130 per share, but that's also two times more than back in March 2006, and I don't even want to think about the real "market value" of Steve Jobs. Oh, yeah, and Apple didn't say just yet what they have in the hat for Jobs, but if it's another stock option, I am sure he'll be happy to get it, as long as its successful work is directly reflected by the value of its shares...