To be fair to Gruber, who else gets that kind of access to Apple senior management? For enthusiasts it's pretty cool getting to hear him talk to Federighi and Schiller reasonably informally and hearing cool "behind the black curtain" type stories.
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Apple Executives Receive Stock Worth Over $19 Million Each as RSUs Awarded in 2014 Vest
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To be fair to Gruber, who else gets that kind of access to Apple senior management? For enthusiasts it's pretty cool getting to hear him talk to Federighi and Schiller reasonably informally and hearing cool "behind the black curtain" type stories.
...and look how white and (mostly) male they all are! Isn't all of this just great!
Wow. That's a lot of money. These stories are so abstract to me. Flippant arbitrary numbers. Life changing numbers are every day to some. I'm just trying to put enough food on the table. A tiny fraction of one of these awards would solve all of my financial problems. I can't help but feel a bit jealous of these people. I'm happy for them, but wonder what all of my hard work is for sometimes, and looking at the world at large - devastating hurricane damage, abysmal out of date gun laws, racism in office and on the ground, and x amount of hardships, it's hard to understand what benefit there is in learning that a handful of people have made a lot of money. Seeing their happy faces, as nice as they are, isn't making my day better, and I'm doubtful that it's particularly great PR for Apple who are seeming more and more out of touch with and out of reach from most people.
Good comments, but the part I italicized isn’t quite right. You only incur capital gains (or losses) upon sale of shares, not as their value fluctuates while you hold them. Until sale, you only have potential capital gains (or losses).
The bargain element of an NSO transaction is also taxed as ordinary income. You're correct, however, in that the bargain element of an ISO transaction can be treated as a capital gain rather than ordinary income, but only if certain conditions are met. And there's an annual cap of $100,000 on the value of ISO shares which can become exercisable each year.
Recipients of RSUs generally do lose something in the bargain, if by that you mean have to pay taxes on them. For other forms of compensation we could think of them in the same way you are suggesting here - that the employer is just adding more to the compensation it would otherwise give the employee in order to cover the taxes they will owe on that compensation. Regardless, if $20 million is what an employee receives through vesting RSUs, that $20 million represents taxable (ordinary) income just as it would if it had been paid in cash. When Mr. Cook, e.g., has RSUs vest, governments (in the aggregate) receive more in withholding payments than he does in stock value.
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Thank you.
And certainly you only owe taxes on capital gains when you realize them, generally speaking at least. But I think that goes without saying.
I think what I said is still correct. Those gains or losses are treated as capital gains or losses - realized or not. Just as with other stock holdings, they represent unrealized capital gains or losses even before they are sold. But capital gains aren't generally taxed until they are realized.
Exactly - I'm not jealous of the money - but there is no way that these people are "worth" a compensation they receive in any objective sense.
There are only 24 hours in a day - and these people are not working 100-1000x times harder than their engineers, or even their cleaning staff.
I'm part of a small team that had a satellite payload launch this year - our manager works hard - but he doesn't work orders of magnitude more than the rest of the *team*, (s)he gets maybe a 2x compensation compared to us and that's well within the bounds of reasonableness.
That the American public has come to believe that salary is reflection of a person's ability and actual value to society* and that winners of the salary lottery are somehow - because the market is always right - justified, is a prime contributor to the political and social chasm that has recently been highlighted in the USA.
*one can know the price of things and not their value
There are only 24 hours in a day - and these people are not working 100-1000x times harder than their engineers, or even their cleaning staff.
I'm part of a small team that had a satellite payload launch this year - our manager works hard - but he doesn't work orders of magnitude more than the rest of the *team*, (s)he gets maybe a 2x compensation compared to us and that's well within the bounds of reasonableness.
That the American public has come to believe that salary is reflection of a person's ability and actual value to society* and that winners of the salary lottery are somehow - because the market is always right - justified, is a prime contributor to the political and social chasm that has recently been highlighted in the USA.
*one can know the price of things and not their value
But RSU is taxed at ordinary income tax rates... meaning, if they’re income has crossed the ~$450k mark with or without RSU they’re subject to 39.6% withholding.
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Maybe they’re the best fit for the roles!? Should females and minorities be added just for the sake of helping these groups ‘catch-up’?
Also remember, white males make up a 31% of the population while black males make up 6% of the population... 33% of white males have a bachelor degree while only 22% of black males do. So effectively out of every 100 people in the US who have a bachelors degree (usually a requirement to grow at most corporations) 32 are white males and 1 is a black male... just following that pattern should expect to see 1 black male for every 32 white males. Won’t you look at that!? They have a black female VP!
Rant over.
[doublepost=1507121845][/doublepost]Behind that black curtain is an ever growing list of muppets holding it up in sheer desperation that it doesn't fall down and expose what this company has become = Another Puppet company who will be traded to death by the masters of deception, who use social injustice and human vanity as their smoke screen to deliver 5% more of things you don't need and will do so until the sun sets on its carbon neutral house of hot air and our courage to think independently and act with integrity outweigh our material wants
Think of it this way. The governments (federal, state, local) got about as much as the people did for the work they solely did.
Ivy is British, he needs toothpaste not money
"refreshen ya drinks guv'na?" (please tell me you were a Simpsons fan.
Nobody is worth the kind of money those people are getting. I've got nothing against a founder taking their original developmental investment in a company and riding it as high as it will go. The problem with American corporate compensation is once a company gets big enough it is easy to funnel a large portion of future growth by existing stock owners to a select few people in management positions through restricted stock units.
With Apple worth over $700 billion dollars and having grown over the last decade at a really good rate, it doesn't take much financial finagling to transfer a substantial amount to top executives through RSUs. To put in in perspective, the eight people named here got a total of $152 million in RSUs but each share of Apple stock only took a 3 cent hit. That is pretty much a rounding error in a company like Apple. When you've got control of over $700 billion in value spread over almost 5 billion individual shares it doesn't take much to reward yourself handsomely while having minimal individual impact.
With Apple worth over $700 billion dollars and having grown over the last decade at a really good rate, it doesn't take much financial finagling to transfer a substantial amount to top executives through RSUs. To put in in perspective, the eight people named here got a total of $152 million in RSUs but each share of Apple stock only took a 3 cent hit. That is pretty much a rounding error in a company like Apple. When you've got control of over $700 billion in value spread over almost 5 billion individual shares it doesn't take much to reward yourself handsomely while having minimal individual impact.
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Apple is going to be the first trillion dollar company. It is not a monopoly, yet outperforms monopolies. The executives are important because at that level they’re creating the corporate culture. Apple still does things the way they want, they don’t care when a bunch of tech geeks on macrumors say their products are crap because they are looking at margins and sales. Steve Jobs: Apple I 666.66 because it cost 222.22 in parts, rare if any discounts, look and feel are important... other companies make no margin just to gain market share. They’re doing something right for the general public.
Now the solution to income inequality where the top paid exec now makes 10000 times the least paid employee is simple. Just go back to the republican tax plan when Eisenhower was president.
Now the solution to income inequality where the top paid exec now makes 10000 times the least paid employee is simple. Just go back to the republican tax plan when Eisenhower was president.
I'm thinking there should be caps on how much money these people can make.
I mean, it gets to a point where their money can make a LOT of money sitting in an account somewhere, so anything past the caps should be distributed to the shareholders and employees equally.
But, hey, I'll be labeled a commie for saying that. Fine by me.
[doublepost=1507130669][/doublepost]It must be nice to have money to live on when you have employees on the retail side that live pay check to pay check because Apple won’t help with cost of living increases.sad sad sad
Eight Apple executives this week received 125,494 shares of stock each after restricted stock units or RSUs first awarded in 2014 vested. Apple issues RSUs, which vest after a set amount of time so long as an employee stays with the company, to its executives as bonus compensation.
Luca Maestri, Craig Federighi, Eddy Cue, Angela Ahrendts, Jeff Williams, Bruce Sewell, Phil Schiller, and Dan Riccio all received the stock awards, worth over $19 million at Apple's current price.
The amount of stock each received was based on Apple's total shareholder return (TSR) relative to other companies in the S&P 500 from September 28, 2014 through September 30, 2017. Apple's TSR during that period was 65.53 percent, which gave it a ranking of 92nd out of the 451 companies in the S&P 500.
That placed Apple in the 80th percentile, so 125,494 RSUs vested. Had Apple's ranking been in the 85th percentile, the executives would have seen a larger reward as 200 percent of the target 68,576 RSUs would have vested.
Over 62,000 shares were withheld by Apple from each distribution to satisfy the tax withholding requirements of vesting RSUs.
Article Link: Apple Executives Receive Stock Worth Over $19 Million Each as RSUs Awarded in 2014 Vest
Starve Apple fanboys with no refreshes long enough, they’ll buy anything no matter what the price is. Now THAT’S “magical”!
lol it's a nice little condensed version of the victimhood politics in this country. Can't stand those people. Its so much easier to blame everyone else for your problems, and sneer at their success though.
Who makes the organization and integration of all the relevant skill sets of the people in those teams possible?
Pretty sure execs could do the engineers' jobs instead if they really wanted to. Lots of execs start as engineers.
Apple hasn't really wowed anyone lately with their products, so it's likely these stock payouts are a result of increased stock price. It's fine if you want evaluate success that way. I personally think it's shortsighted and many engineers and marketers who aren't paid this well could probably manage these products just fine. Executive compensation at large companies is often more about politics than it is about the true performance of the organization.
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I have no problem with rewarding excellence but that’s not the case here. Not one of these VPs are responsible for the share price increase. Not one of them is responsible for the iPhone sales increase.
They are however responsible for constant product delays, supply problems, manufactring problems, poor quality and buggy software, etc.
Steve Jobs and Jony Ive are responsible for Apple’s current position. They started the unstopable juggernaut that is the iPhone and all the current VPs are simply surfing that wave and wrongly taking the credit for it.
Success should be rewarded. However I would rather Apple innovate and sell great products for success rather than rely on nickel and diming, and cheap money grabs...
Example: selling a new iPhone that can’t connect to a new MacBook without a dongle. That’s just pathetic.
Example: selling a new iPhone that can’t connect to a new MacBook without a dongle. That’s just pathetic.
