Apple CEO Tim Cook donates nearly $5M in company stock to charity
Apple CEO Tim Cook gifted 23,215 shares of directly owned company stock to an unidentified charity this week, an amount worth nearly $5 million at the end of trading on Tuesday.
Cook's charitable donation was recorded in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing today. As no shares were sold, a reporting price was not applied to the transfer.
Apple stock finished the day at $215.04, meaning Cook's gift, if converted today, would be worth $4,992,154.
While the destination of Cook's donation is unknown -- corporate leaders are obliged to disclose movement of owned shares, but are not required to publicly report a charitable transaction's recipient -- the executive has made similar gifts in the past. In 2015, Cook transferred 50,000 shares of owned company stock to an unspecified organization.
Including an acquisition of 166 shares on Jan. 31, the last effective day of Apple's 2017 Amended Employee Stock Purchase Plan period, the CEO now 878,425 shares of beneficially owned Apple stock.
This week's contribution is the latest in a string of donations from the Apple chief. In 2014, Cook donated a "substantial sum" to the Human Rights Campaign's Project One America, which focuses on promoting LGBT rights in the U.S. South. That same year, he gave $291,791 to Pennsylvania's Steel Valley School District, funds that were later used to purchase iPads for students and teachers.
In addition to direct donations, Cook has raised funds for the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights by auctioning off one-on-one lunches through online service CharityBuzz. One such auction brought in $330,000 in 2014.
Despite amassing vast wealth as Apple's top executive, Cook leads a relatively simple life that stand in contrast with other tech leaders who spend their fortunes on homes, yachts and planes. Indeed, Apple in 2017 mandated Cook use private jets for future travel, citing new security protocols.
Cook in 2015 said he plans to give a bulk of his money away to charity in what he called a "systematic approach" to philanthropy.
Cook's charitable donation was recorded in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing today. As no shares were sold, a reporting price was not applied to the transfer.
Apple stock finished the day at $215.04, meaning Cook's gift, if converted today, would be worth $4,992,154.
While the destination of Cook's donation is unknown -- corporate leaders are obliged to disclose movement of owned shares, but are not required to publicly report a charitable transaction's recipient -- the executive has made similar gifts in the past. In 2015, Cook transferred 50,000 shares of owned company stock to an unspecified organization.
Including an acquisition of 166 shares on Jan. 31, the last effective day of Apple's 2017 Amended Employee Stock Purchase Plan period, the CEO now 878,425 shares of beneficially owned Apple stock.
This week's contribution is the latest in a string of donations from the Apple chief. In 2014, Cook donated a "substantial sum" to the Human Rights Campaign's Project One America, which focuses on promoting LGBT rights in the U.S. South. That same year, he gave $291,791 to Pennsylvania's Steel Valley School District, funds that were later used to purchase iPads for students and teachers.
In addition to direct donations, Cook has raised funds for the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights by auctioning off one-on-one lunches through online service CharityBuzz. One such auction brought in $330,000 in 2014.
Despite amassing vast wealth as Apple's top executive, Cook leads a relatively simple life that stand in contrast with other tech leaders who spend their fortunes on homes, yachts and planes. Indeed, Apple in 2017 mandated Cook use private jets for future travel, citing new security protocols.
Cook in 2015 said he plans to give a bulk of his money away to charity in what he called a "systematic approach" to philanthropy.
Comments
Just please leave Apple out of your social agenda.
Instead he gives it away. And yet, someone can’t think of something good to say? Sad.
to agencies involved in humanitarian disasters (e.g. via donations to the American Red Cross), efforts supporting
a greener planet (Apple being nearly "net zero" here), and also human rights issues such as the LGBT movement.
Just looking at the 2018 sponsor list for SF Gay Pride, this includes Budweiser, Hilton Hotels, T-Mobile, Smirnoff,
Salesforce, the Commonwealth Club, Amazon, AT&T, intel, PG&E, airbnb, Lyft, many health orgs such as
the Kaiser Foundation, Genentech, Gilead, etc., and retail ops ranging from Safeway to Nordstrom.
Now you may be anything from a capital-L libertarian, a religious practitioner, a Leninist, or amongst those believing that any
corporatist involvement in "social agendas" constitutes anathema. Meanwhile, Apple and the LGBT
rights movement marches on.
so I guess it's OK to mine the high-profit vein there as long as the company CEOs don't make an issue of whether or not they smoke cigarettes. By this reasoning, profitable coal companies (are there any?) are great, too, as long as the CEO disdains lobbying the criminal enterprise operating out of the Whitehouse. (Oops, sorry I meant the working-for-the-people civil servants within.) Apologies for the
whataboutism here, just barely.
Although I am also in the category of having sizable AAPL holdings, I've bet that the net present value of AAPL shares also include a component inculcated by Tim Cook's tenure (that scoundrel, standing up for privacy rights, amongst other things.) Perhaps your
philosophy of filtering via a Capitalist Purity Test can still obtain. How about hedging your polluted AAPL bet with calls or puts
bought or sold in companies that go overboard in not having the CEO care a whit about their corporate values.
Jobs, brilliant though he was, was notoriously private about his charitable giving, and didn’t have much interest in corporate giving — rather infamously shutting down Apple’s philanthropy programs when he returned to the company. Even averting bankruptcy and becoming massively profitable, he avoided reinstating Apple’s philanthropy programs, such as matching gifts — something many other (and far less profitable) tech companies offered. His public view on the matter was that it wasn’t Apple’s job to be charitable, that its focus should be on creating wealth for its people, who can then do what they will with that wealth including give to charity. (That always felt a tad heartless to me, even if it was a convenient business position to take.) It should be noted Apple did make an exception to this a policy in 2008 when it donated $100k to block Proposition 8. Ultimately Apple acknowledged then, as it does now more often and publicly under Tim’s leadership, that there are certain social policies that Apple needs to champion if it wants to do what’s best for its people. Standing on the side of equality by being pro-LGBT is one of those positions Apple realizes is for the best of its own people — it makes the company more successful at attracting talent, which leads to better products, which in turn profits its shareholders, whether they acknowledge that connection or not.