Apple’s senior vice-president of retail earns almost twice as much as CEO Tim Cook

Apple fans will no doubt recall the woman who wore the fashion-forward pink trench coat at the 2017 iPhone X reveal and boldly re-branded Apple Stores to ‘Town Squares,’ but less probably know she’s Apple’s best-paid employee.

So who is this executive and how did she get to be such a valuable part of Apple’s executive team?

Angela Ahrendts is Apple’s senior vice-president of retail, in charge of strategy, real estate, development and operations of Apple’s physical stores, online store and contact centres.

A designer salary

This year, the 57-year-old made $24.2 million USD, according to Apple Securities and Exchange Commission filings. The earnings took the form of a $1 million salary, $20 million in stock, $3.1 million in performance pay and $88,000 in other compensation.

Though this isn’t substantially more than several other top-ranking executives, including CFO Lucas Maestri and senior vice-president of hardware technologies Johny Srouji (both of whom are at $24.1 million) — it is much more than CEO Tim Cook, who earned $12.8 million.

The filing does not, however, include a share award that Cook received in 2011, which equates to about $89 million.

Ahrendts’ has been paid more than Cook since beginning at Apple in 2014. She was lured away from luxury fashion brand Burberry (known for its trench coats, which Ahrendts continues to don regularly), where she was director and CEO.

Impressive Burberry track record

During her time at Burberry, the company value rose from £2 billion to over £7 billion, and CNN Money reported in 2013 that she was the highest paid CEO in the U.K. Her successful track record is no doubt the reason Apple pursued hiring Ahrendts and offered such an attractive salary.

Ahrendts has previously stated she wasn’t looking to join a new company when CEO Tim Cook approached her, but was impressed by Cook himself.

“I just absolutely loved his integrity, his values. Nothing anybody can write, say, or do is going to take him off of always doing the right thing. Not just for Apple, but for Apple’s people, for communities, for countries. The world needs more leaders like Tim,” she told Fortune in 2015.

Previous to Burberry, Ahrendts was executive vice-president at Liz Claiborne and president of Donna Karan International.

In its statement regarding executive salaries, Apple noted: “We believe the compensation paid to our named executive officers for 2017 appropriately reflects and rewards their contributions to our performance.”

Source: Apple SEC filing Via: Business Insider