Tim Cook's legacy now rests on board tenure

The Walt Disney

03/09/2026 13:00

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.
By Robert Cyran
NEW YORK, Sept 2 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Leave them wanting more is good advice for party revelers, professional athletes and executive chairmen. Tim Cook, Apple's AAPL.O chief executive for 15 years until Tuesday, now sits at the head of the boardroom table. A newly disclosed pay package cuts his salary by a third, to $2 million a year, but $45 million of targeted annual equity awards indicates that his role at the nearly $5 trillion company remains substantial. The danger, both for shareholders and his successor as CEO, John Ternus, is that he overstays his welcome.
It’s hard to overstate Cook’s success. His own ascension was messy and drawn out, enlisted to run Apple on three separate occasions starting in 2009, and officially given the corner office in 2011 months before founder Steve Jobs died. A $100 investment then would have returned more than $2,700, outperforming the S&P 500 Index .SPX, as Cook helped turn the iPhone into technology's biggest franchise.
Apple cannot just coast, however. Its overwhelming importance to memory suppliers and chipmakers has waned with the explosion of data centers. Artificial intelligence will lead to new gadgets that may threaten the dominance of its own. A fracturing world also makes selling handsets and other products and services harder. Ternus will presumably lean on Cook, who mastered supply chains and diplomacy, for all these matters.
It’s important he not become a long-term crutch, however. Walt Disney’s DIS.N Bob Iger is a textbook case of sticking around too long. He handpicked Bob Chapek to replace him in 2020, but remained executive chair before stepping back in as CEO, with less success than his earlier run.
James Gorman, who helped clean up the Disney mess, provides a better template from his time leading Morgan Stanley. After refocusing the investment bank on wealth management following the financial crisis, he ceded power to Ted Pick in 2023, kept other seasoned executives from leaving and became executive chairman. Gorman then left the boardroom a year later. 
Half of Cook’s bonus vests based on Apple’s stock performance against other companies in the benchmark index. The rest accrues to him over four years or when he retires. It sounds like a reasonable structure to ensure Ternus isn't looking over his shoulder for too long, giving him a shot to try and find new heights from which to depart.
     
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     CONTEXT NEWS 
Apple said on September 1 that it would pay new Chief Executive John Ternus $3 million a year in salary with a target equity award worth $55 million in the company's fiscal year ending September 25, 2027. His predecessor, Tim Cook, who is now executive chairman, receives $2 million annually, with a similarly structured bonus of $45 million. 
Half of Cook’s award is in performance-based restricted stock units that vest based on Apple’s total shareholder return relative to other S&P 500 Index companies, and the other half in time-based RSUs that vest semiannually over four years.

(Editing by Jeffrey Goldfarb; Production by Maya Nandhini)
((For previous columns by the author, Reuters customers can click on CYRAN/robert.cyran@thomsonreuters.com; Reuters Messaging: robert.cyran.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))