Apple's Tim Cook heads pay scale

The huge bonus handed to Tim Cook when he took over at the helm of Apple not only made him the best-paid boss of a US public company last year, it meant he earned more than the nine next most generously remunerated chief executives combined.

Mr Cook was given $376.2m in Apple shares last August as what the iPhone-maker called a "promotion and retention award".

A preliminary analysis of pay data from regulatory filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission reveals that the top 100 chief executives were paid $2.1bn in total last year, up 2 per cent on 2010. The average chief executive was paid $14.4m, more than 300 times the average American salary.

Mr Cook's total package of $378m – which included a salary of $900,000 – put him streets ahead of the next best-paid chief executive, Larry Ellison of software giant Oracle, who made $77.6m. In third place was Ronald Johnson, who left Apple to run JC Penney, the department store chain.