John Browett Officially Joins Apple as Retail Chief, Receives Stock Rights Worth $60 Million

browettA pair of filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission published early today reveal that former Dixons Retail CEO John Browett, who was announced in January as the next Senior Vice President of Retail at Apple, has officially started work with the company. The development is in line with previous announcements about an April start.

Browett's start date was revealed in an SEC Form 3 filing noting that Browett owned no stock in Apple at the time he began work. The document lists April 20 as the "date of event requiring statement", indicating that he began work at Apple last Friday.

As of that start date, Browett also received a total of 100,000 restricted stock units (RSUs) on Friday, with staggered vesting dates designed to reward Browett for staying on the job. At Apple's current stock price, those RSUs are worth roughly $61 million. The first batch of 5,000 units will vest on October 20, and an additional 15,000 units will vest at Browett's one-year anniversary with the company, which is April 20, 2013. The remainder of the units will vest in batches of 20,000 units on each anniversary of his start date through the fifth year.

Unlike options, restricted stock units do not require the recipient to purchase stock at an exercise price in order to receive the shares. The RSUs simply convert to actual shares on the vesting dates, although there are tax implications to the conversion that generally result in recipients immediately selling off at least some portion of their grants as they vest.

Browett has not yet been added to Apple's leadership page on its website, but his photo and a brief biography should be appearing there in the near future. Browett replaces Ron Johnson, who left Apple last November to become CEO of department store chain J.C. Penney.

Top Rated Comments

IJ Reilly Avatar
157 months ago
Maybe now he can afford a better haircut.
Score: 31 Votes (Like | Disagree)
rmwebs Avatar
157 months ago
Prepare for an Apple rebrand to white text on a red background with '75% OFF SALE' signs everywhere in the shops :p
Score: 22 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Mike Oxard Avatar
157 months ago
I should get a reward for spending over $200,000 on Apple computers in the last 20 years.

If you'd bought shares instead of computers you'd be a multi millionaire by now.
Score: 19 Votes (Like | Disagree)
imgonephishin Avatar
157 months ago
Wow. So just for surviving the first 6 months he gets $3,000,000 in stock alone (not sure what his salary is). If he lasts the remainder of the year he pockets an additional $9,000,000. At $12MM a year, he makes about the same amount per day, seven days a week, as the average US salary per year: $35K vs. a national average of $39K.

P.S. I might add that this is for the FIRST year's performance, this is not rewarding a stellar prior year. We've all been at new jobs where basically the first 6 months is getting up and running and learning the ropes of business, culture, industry, etc.
Score: 16 Votes (Like | Disagree)
imageWIS Avatar
157 months ago
Wow. So just for surviving the first 6 months he gets $3,000,000 is stock alone (not sure what his salary is). If he lasts the remainder of the year he pockets an additional $9,000,000. At $12MM a year, he makes about the same amount per day, seven days a week, as the average US salary per year: $35K vs. a national average of $39K.

This is one of the many reasons the system is as screwed up as it is... the financial disparity is close to tipping point.
Score: 14 Votes (Like | Disagree)
basesloaded190 Avatar
157 months ago
I should get a reward for spending over $200,000 on Apple computers in the last 20 years.

Yikes, $10,000/ year is a lot of money on computers!
Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Popular Stories

iOS 18 Siri Integrated Feature

iOS 18 Rumored to Add These 10 New Features to Your iPhone

Wednesday April 24, 2024 2:05 pm PDT by
Apple is set to unveil iOS 18 during its WWDC keynote on June 10, so the software update is a little over six weeks away from being announced. Below, we recap rumored features and changes planned for the iPhone with iOS 18. iOS 18 will reportedly be the "biggest" update in the iPhone's history, with new ChatGPT-inspired generative AI features, a more customizable Home Screen, and much more....
Apple Silicon AI Optimized Feature Siri

Apple Releases Open Source AI Models That Run On-Device

Wednesday April 24, 2024 3:39 pm PDT by
Apple today released several open source large language models (LLMs) that are designed to run on-device rather than through cloud servers. Called OpenELM (Open-source Efficient Language Models), the LLMs are available on the Hugging Face Hub, a community for sharing AI code. As outlined in a white paper [PDF], there are eight total OpenELM models, four of which were pre-trained using the...
maxresdefault

Apple Announces 'Let Loose' Event on May 7 Amid Rumors of New iPads

Tuesday April 23, 2024 7:11 am PDT by
Apple has announced it will be holding a special event on Tuesday, May 7 at 7 a.m. Pacific Time (10 a.m. Eastern Time), with a live stream to be available on Apple.com and on YouTube as usual. The event invitation has a tagline of "Let Loose" and shows an artistic render of an Apple Pencil, suggesting that iPads will be a focus of the event. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more ...
apple id account

Apple ID Accounts Logging Out Users and Requiring Password Reset

Saturday April 27, 2024 12:41 am PDT by
There are widespread reports of Apple users being locked out of their Apple ID overnight for no apparent reason, requiring a password reset before they can log in again. Users say the sudden inexplicable Apple ID sign-out is occurring across multiple devices. When they attempt to sign in again they are locked out of their account and asked to reset their password in order to regain access. ...
macbook pro purple february

Best Buy Introduces Record Low Prices on Apple's M3 MacBook Pro for Members

Thursday April 25, 2024 7:41 am PDT by
Best Buy is discounting a collection of M3 MacBook Pro computers today, this time focusing on the 14-inch version of the laptop. Every deal in this sale requires you to have a My Best Buy Plus or Total membership, although non-members can still get solid second-best prices on these MacBook Pro models. Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with Best Buy. When you click a link and make a...
macos sonoma feature purple green

Apple's Regular Mac Base RAM Boosts Ended When Tim Cook Took Over

Friday April 26, 2024 6:34 am PDT by
Apple used to regularly increase the base memory of its Macs up until 2011, the same year Tim Cook was appointed CEO, charts posted on Mastodon by David Schaub show. Earlier this year, Schaub generated two charts: One showing the base memory capacities of Apple's all-in-one Macs from 1984 onwards, and a second depicting Apple's consumer laptop base RAM from 1999 onwards. Both charts were...