Do Apple Inc (AAPL) Executives Have Skin In This Game?

I will be voting my shares that they must indeed have a significant stake in Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) stock.  I don’t want any top level executive or board member to be a sideline player.  They should have a significant portion of their net worth in Apple stock.  Right now it appears the majority of board members and key executives hold little to no stock.  This does explain why they seem to disregard the stock movement and had not taken action with their dividends at the end of 2012 like 100’s of companies chose to do for their shareholders.  If you are not long Apple shares do you really care about a dividend or where the stock price is heading in the long run?

GET YOUR INTERESTS ALIGNED

When it comes to investing make sure your management team is aligned with your interests. If they are not you might start looking for the door.  For the first time in four years I am looking at that door for this reason alone.  I only kick myself I did not seek this lack of ownership engagement by the board and executives while the stock was higher.  Everyone disregards these signals when things are going good.  You just look past them and why not, things are great right?  Well, this is exactly the time when you have to dig deep and look at everything.

If you elected electronic voting you should have received your proxy vote and you may vote your preferences online.  If you don’t you have nobody to blame when the executives continue to flip options and not own stakes in the company.  This could be a great question for somebody to ask at the annual meeting….why don’t you guys own substantial stakes in the company you run?

(you can get a PDF copy of the proxy here)

The article Do Apple Executives Have Skin In This Game? originally appeared on Fool.com.

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