Apple boss Tim Cook’s pay package more than doubled last year to $9.22m as the iPhone maker’s share price soared to record levels. But Angela Ahrendts, his new head of retail, took home the biggest award in 2014 – a whopping $73.3m – boosted by a massive sign-on package.



Cook’s package included a $6.7m bonus on top of a base salary of $1.75m and “other” compensation of more than $774,000 for the fiscal year that ended in September, the tech company said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Cook’s pay package was valued at $4.25m in 2013.

The filing also detailed the pay package of Ahrendts, the former chief executive of Burberry who was brought in to head Apple’s retail division in May. Ahrendts received stock awards worth $70m alongside a $1m salary, a $1.6m bonus plus a $500,000 hiring bonus. The company said Ahrendts’s total package topped $73.3m last year, the highest among all Apple’s executives for the year.

Before joining Burberry, Ahrendts was one of the UK’s highest-paid executives and had shares in Burberry worth $37m and a pay deal that topped $5m a year, according to Apple’s filing. Some $37m of her Apple shares were to compensate her for the Burberry stock she could no longer hold, while $33m were given as a new hire incentive.

Apple has previously handed big share options to its top hires. When Cook succeeded co-founder Steve Jobs as CEO in 2011, he received compensation of $378m, one of the biggest pay packages on record, boosted by $376.2m in stock awards that he will get in over a decade.

Apple stock soared last year to reach as high as $119.75 in November, making it the most highly valued company on the US markets. In October, Apple forecast that revenue in the final three months of 2014 would be $63.5bn to $66.5bn. The company will report first-quarter earnings on 27 January.

The company also announced that the J Crew chairman, Millard “Mickey” Drexler, would be stepping down from Apple’s board. A replacement has yet to be nominated.