Monday, January 12, 2009

Steve Jobs Takes His Annual $1 Salary From Apple

Whether you worship him or despise him, unlike other greedy CEOs, Steve Jobs has been quite generous with not squeezing any more money out of Apple. This report details what he gets yearly for being Apple's CEO - $1/year.

What is interesting and relevant here (this is, after all, a Disney blog) is what he makes as being on the board of The Walt Disney Company.

Most of Jobs' wealth comes not from Apple but from the 138 million shares he owns of The Walt Disney Co., a 7.3 percent stake that makes him Disney's largest individual shareholder. Jobs scored the Disney stake through a brilliant deal in which he sold Pixar Animation Studios, a company he bought from George Lucas for $10 million in 1986, to Disney in a multibillion-dollar stock trade 20 years later.

Jobs' Disney holdings are now worth $3.2 billion, more than $1 billion less than the stock was worth last year.

Jobs has a similar relationship with Disney, where he serves on the board, as he does with Apple when it comes to pay. He doesn't take a salary for his work as a Disney director.


I mean, we know he's wealthy, and he knows it too. Unlike the other CEOs that simply can't get enough, he at least shows us that he really doesn't need to squeeze everything that he could get. No one would complain if he makes, say, $500,000 annual salary from Apple, even though it is a drop in the bucket for him. That's why he doesn't.

I'm indifferent towards Steve Jobs (I've heard some horror stories about him). But even I have to tip my hat towards him for this.

Zz.

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