

Tim Cook Passes on $75 million dividend - dmvaldman
http://www.slashgear.com/tim-cook-turns-down-75m-dividend-25230107/

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smackfu
That's... odd. Can anyone guess why he did this? Maybe tax reasons? He got a
million shares for becoming CEO, so it's not like he's just into saving Apple
money or anything.

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feral
This is a guess:

Perhaps its because he's the new CEO, and Apple has just issued a large
dividend for the first time in a long time - it looks better if the new CEO
isn't a major beneficiary of the policy shift. This shows everyone that he's
in for the long run - there's no possible accusation that the dividend was for
short term personal gain.

This also sends the signal that he isn't just paying the dividend because he
thinks share growth (otherwise his main compensation) is finished with.

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ryangilbert
Apple really has some classy people representing their company. Well done.

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nknight
This seemed extremely bizarre to me until I read the filing itself[1].

The RSUs in question are unvested. Apparently a change was just made by the
board that means unvested RSUs will collect dividends which will be paid out
upon vesting. Cook is declining those.

I can kind of understand that it would look strange to make a change like this
to already-granted RSUs, but if it were that big of a concern, it seems odd
that only Cook would decline the dividends, or that the board would have made
the change retroactive in the first place, so I still don't entirely
understand declining them.

[1]
[http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/320193/00011814311203...](http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/320193/000118143112032458/rrd346000.htm)

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smackfu
Dividends on unvested stock options kind of suck. You don't get the money, but
the value of your stock goes down (in theory by the amount of the dividend).

