Tim Cook’s $700k Security Detail Is Small Compared To Other Major CEOs

Apple is the world’s richest and most profitable company and its CEO, Tim Cook, who openly admitted about being gay, is a high profile figure.

Business Insider reports that Patently Apple pulled the figure from Apple’s Schedule 14A report with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

The documents, unearthed from a SEC filing last March, count the security detail among the Apple executive’s benefits in kind.

In the file the expenses of $774,176 were listed under all other compensation.

Given all the profit that Cook helps Apple earn each year, an extra $700k to keep him safe is the least that they can do for him. Firstly contributions to Cook’s account under the 401(k) plan are at $15,600 per year.

The $1.6 million Amazon paid in 2013 to guard Bezos at work and on the road makes Cook’s $700,000 seem downright stingy, doesn’t it? While security costs were recorded as $699,133. “His personal safety and security are of the utmost importance to the Company and its shareholders”, Apple explains elsewhere in filing, and thus it finds the expense to be “reasonable and necessary”, notes the Guardian. Organizations, for example, Oracle and Amazon have spent more than a million dollars on their CEO’s security point of interest. So obviously, companies spend plenty of money to protect their leadership.

But that isn’t actually that much considering how much other tech firms have spent on security for their senior execs in the past.

Then there’s Oracle’s former CEO Larry Ellison, now serving as executive chairman and chief technology officer.