CEO compensation has been the subject of controversy for years. Many people working for large companies and investors in these companies object to chief executive pay, which often reaches tens of millions of dollars a year. Boards of these companies argue that outstanding CEOs are hard to find. If they are not paid well, they can go elsewhere, leaving only substandard management behind.

The median pay for CEOs has risen most years over the last decade when measured by the compensation of S&P 500 companies. A typical CEO makes a hundred times more than the median pay of their workers. At public corporations with low-paid workers, the multiple can be much higher. (These are the big US companies paying less than $10 an hour.)

Some years, one or more CEOs make over $100 million. It is rare but not underheard of. In 2022, according to proxy information from MyLogIQ, which uses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning company to analyze public company information, one CEO reached the figure.

Apple CEO Tim Cook made $99,420,097 last year. Of this, $88,994,164 was in stock options. This put him well ahead of the No. 2 CEO on the list based on total compensation: AIG’s Peter Zaffino made 75,314,199.

Cook may be one of the only CEOs in recent history who deserves a huge payday. Apple is arguably the most successful public company in America. In the last two years, Apple’s stock is up 23% while the NASDAQ is flat. Shares in other major tech companies have significantly underperformed that number.

Apple has had the highest market cap of any US company for the better part of three years. It sits at $2.6 trillion today. (These are the world’s most valuable companies.)

Apple also has an installed base of an extraordinary two billion active devices, most of which are iPhones. It continues to churn out impressive financial results. In the most recent quarter, revenue was $117.2 billion, on which it made $30 billion. Of the total revenue, $65.8 billion came from iPhone sales.

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There were questions about Cook’s tenure from the start. He took over Apple just before the death of founder Steve Jobs on Oct. 5, 2011. Jobs was one of the great inventors in American history, and his creation of the iPhone revolutionized the smartphone and computer industries. Cook has kept the momentum of this growth growing.

If anyone deserves $100 million for his performance in 2022, it is Cook.

Data is provided by MyLogIQ, which uses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to analyze public company information.

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