Tim Cook sells $36 mn worth of Apple stock

Apple chief Tim Cook sold $36 million worth of company stock last week, according to a securities filing on Friday.

The sale comes as Cook completed five years of running the company, lifting the restrictions on 1.26 million shares of stock he had been awarded earlier.

Apple withheld over 656,000 shares to meet tax withholding requirements, while Cook sold  334,000 shares on the open market this week, which fetched him almost $36 million, according to the filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
 
Including some prior Apple stock holdings, Cook now held 1.31 million shares worth about $140 million at yesterday's closing price. Cook could also collect another 3.5 million shares that remained under restrictions in coming years.

The share award was based partly on how well Apple's stock did relative to the Standard & Poor's 500 Index over the past three years. This had resulted in some controversy from compensation experts, who argued that the simple measurement might not have accurately reflected Cook's performance as CEO.

Of the awarded 1.26 million shares, 280,000 were dependent on the performance measurement.

After adjusting for stock splits and dividends over three years, Apple's total return stood at 68 per cent. As that fell in the top one-third of all S&P 500 stocks, Cook was awarded the maximum portion of shares allocated on the basis of performance, or 280,000 shares.

Meanwhile, under Cook's stewardship Apple had become the world's biggest public company, and had twice broken the record for the biggest quarterly profit in history.

The company had also doubled in size from predecessor Steve Jobs' last full quarter as chief executive when Apple sold 20.3 million iPhones.

The company now sold more than double that and its 110,000 staff today compared with just over 60,000 five years ago.

When Cook took over the reins Apple had four stores in China, against 41 today.