Last week Bob Wright released his new corporate tell-all, “The Wright Stuff.”
The bombshell revelation from Wright’s book was that then-GE Chairman Jack Welch turned down an offer to acquire Apple for $2 billion in 1996.
Yes, Welch, the infamous corporate icon and disciple of the Six Sigma approach, passed on a chance to buy Apple for a song. LOL.
Fast-forward to today. Apple is the biggest kid on the block, much the way GE was back in the ’90s.
When Welch retired in 2001, GE gave him a $417 million severance package, the largest of its kind up to that point.
Could history be repeating itself?
Much the way Welch was the corporate giant of his day, Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook is King of the Business World today.
Steve Jobs’ handpicked replacement has done great work making Apple the global leader in smartphones and music technologies.
Under Cook, the company has amassed more money than most countries can dream of. Sometimes Apple actually has more cash on hand than even the US Treasury Department.
Close to $200 billion is floating among all of its overseas bank accounts and domestic holdings. Its market cap today stands at $616 billion.
And the humble Cook has amassed an equally incredible fortune of $120 million worth of Apple stock, mostly through grants, and more than $600 million in restricted stock units that begin to vest this year and again in 2021. That was called a retention package. He makes just over $10 million a year, plus expenses for things like security.
I am adamantly against pay-czars and government overreach, but neither of these leaders is worth more than a half-billion dollars of shareholders’ money, despite creating hundreds of thousands of well-paying jobs.
These are, after all, public companies.
The more things change…