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Apple CEO Tim Cook’s leadership has propelled the company to new heights: Apple’s market capitalization has peaked at more than $3 trillion.
Cook himself owns a significant stake in Apple, but Apple homeowners are typically institutional investors.
Apple releases a proxy statement each year that reveals the institutions and individuals who hold 5% or more of the company’s stock.
Apple’s latest proxy statement is set to be released in January 2024. Until then, we only know what the ownership looked like as of January 2023, almost a full year ago.
Lots could have changed since then, but at the time, the document revealed that Apple’s largest shareholder was the firm Vanguard Group Inc., which held 7.96% of the company’s shares, or more than 1.2 billion shares.
BlackRock Inc. owned about 1. 1 billion shares, or 6% of the issued shares, according to the filing. The third-largest holder of Apple shares, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. , with holdings amounting to about 5. 73% of Apple’s notable shares.
The largest individual investor in the company in January 2023 was Arthur Levinson, the proxy stated, with over 4.5 million shares. Levinson has been an Apple board member since 2000 and chair of the board since 2011.
Next on the list after Levinson, in terms of individuals, was Apple CEO Tim Cook, followed by Jeff Williams, the company’s chief operating officer, according to the document.
Updated data on Apple’s Tim Cook stock is expected to be released in January 2024.
He owned 3. 3 million shares as of October 2023, according to an SEC filing.
Steve Jobs created the company NeXT in the mid-1980s. Amid a sales slump for Apple, Jobs resigned, founded the company, and poached Apple talent to work for NeXT.
In 1996, Apple bought NeXT, believing that NeXT’s operating formula had a greater chance of good luck in the market. Jobs was rehired and in July 1997 returned to CEO after a coup d’état.
Within Jobs’ first year back as CEO, he entered into a partnership with Bill Gates’ Microsoft, which made a $150 million investment in Apple and committed to developing software for macOS. In 2003, Microsoft opted to sell all of its Apple stock for $550 million.
Apple was founded through Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne in 1976. Wayne sold his 10% stake in Apple for $1,500 12 days after Apple was founded.
It’s unclear exactly what Wozniak’s current ownership looks like, however, he and Steve Jobs had a 45% stake in the company. Jobs’ widow, Laurene Powell Jobs, inherited 5. 5 million shares of Apple stock, according to corporate filings from 2011. But in 2022, she vowed to donate most of her wealth through her philanthropic efforts and it’s unclear exactly how many shares. Apple still owns.