Apple boss Cook: at the helm of the group for nine years - and now a billionaire
Photo:BERNADETTE SIMPAO / AFP
The corona crisis has many losers - and a few winners. The American tech companies are among the latter, which can also be seen in the share prices. In the past week alone, the value of an Apple share has risen by almost five percent - and thus helped the head of the group to rise to a select group: Tim Cook is now a dollar billionaire. At least that is what the US financial news agency Bloomberg calculated, which keeps a continuously updated list of the rich.
Cook is thus a rarity on the Bloomberg billionaires list: He is neither the founder of a large corporation, nor has he inherited his fortune. Instead, the Apple boss earned his billion as an employee. Admittedly, the blocks of shares received in the process played a decisive role in this. According to Bloomberg, Cook currently owns nearly 850,000 shares, which are currently worth around $ 375 million. Cook is likely to have amassed a further $ 650 million in assets from earlier share sales, dividends and his remuneration as CEO.
However, Bloomberg also points out that the 59-year-old Cook announced in 2015 that he wanted to donate a large part of his wealth and that he had already given Apple shares worth several million dollars to charity. If the Apple boss has made further donations in the meantime, of which nothing is known so far, he could also have less than a billion dollars, Bloomberg notes.
Cook's financial rise goes hand in hand with the soaring of the group he leads. Nine years ago he took over the management of Apple from its seriously ill co-founder Steve Jobs, who died shortly afterwards. At the time, the company was worth $ 350 billion. Apple is now nearing $ 2 trillion in value.
Despite his new status, Cook is thus far removed from the wealth dimensions that other heads of the large US tech companies, who are also their founders, achieve. Amazon boss Jeff Bezos, for example, is considered the richest person in the world with a fortune currently estimated at $ 186 billion. Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, ranks third with an estimated one hundred billion euros.
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