Apple's New GC Gets Stock Windfall (If He Can Survive Long Enough)

Steve Jobs doesn’t mind dishing out an enormous amount of stock for his new GCs — even though (or especially since?) no one ever sticks around Apple long enough to actually make it worth anything.

The short-tenured former IBM lawyer Don Rosenberg left about $30 million worth of unvested stock on the table when he left Apple (ignore the boot-print on the back of his Brionis) to become Qualcomm’s GC. Dan Cooperman appeared to miss out on $18 million when he “retired” earlier this month after just two years on the job. Goodness, working with Steve Jobs must just be a bowlful of fun times.

(Apple did have one longlasting GC: Nancy Heinen. She stayed on the job for nearly a decade before getting caught up with that pesky little stock options backdating scandal. And man, did her options vest.)

So it is with mixed emotions that Legal Pad reports that Apple gave its new GC Bruce Sewell 100,000 shares of Apple stock last week. The good news: it’s worth about $18.4 million at the $184-a-share price that Apple stock was trading at last Monday when the grant was made. The bad news: it vests over the next four years. We wish you luck, Mr. Sewell.

— Zusha Elinson