Who are Apple’s largest shareholders?
Apple is one of a few companies to achieve a $1 trillion market capitalisation, making it attractive to investors. Here, we list the largest Apple shareholders, and show you how to become a shareholder yourself.
Apple’s largest individual shareholders
The following people are more accurately called Apple (AAPL) insiders rather than investors, because they’ve amassed their shareholdings as part of their compensation package as employees or board members of Apple.
The table below details the shareholdings of the top five individual shareholders in Apple. The information is taken from Apple’s most recent 14A filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which details director and executive compensation and shareholdings – among other things.1
Position at Apple | Number of common stock1 | Percentage of ownership | |
Arthur (Art) Levinson | Chairman of the board | 1,148,712 | * |
Tim Cook | Chief executive officer (CEO) | 847,969 | * |
Jeff Williams | Chief operating officer (COO) | 122,195 | * |
Al Gore | Member of the board | 115,014 | * |
Deirdre O’Brien | Senior vice president, retail and people | 33,854 | * |
*Amounts to less than 0.05% of the issued and outstanding shares of Apple’s common stock.
Art Levinson
Arthur (Art) Levinson is chairman of the board at Apple, and he’s held this role since 2011. Before he took the position as chairman at Apple, Art was the chairman and CEO at Genentech – a biotechnology company.
During his tenure as chairman of the board at Apple, Art has secured a shareholding of 1,148,712 shares. The share price at the time of writing (10 June 2020) is $352.84 a share, meaning that Levinson’s shareholding in Apple amounts to $405,311,542
Tim Cook
Tim Cook is the current CEO and former COO of Apple, taking over from Steve Jobs as CEO in 2011 – six weeks before Jobs died due to complications from pancreatic cancer. As well as being CEO of Apple, Cook serves on the board of Nike.
At the time of writing, excluding any previous sales, Cook held 847,969 Apple shares. Using the price of $352.84 a share, this amounts to a shareholding worth $299,197,381. But, as with other executives at Apple, Cook also has unused stock options and other employee stock benefits that he has not yet chosen to exercise.
Jeff Williams
Jeff Williams is the current COO of Apple. He reports directly to Tim Cook on Apple’s entire worldwide operations, and customer service and support. He also leads Apple’s design team – a role which he took over following the departure of Jony Ive as chief design officer.
Williams’s shareholding at the time of writing is 122,195. If we use that same price of $352.84 a share, the total value of his current stake in Apple is $43,155,283.
Al Gore
Al Gore is more widely known as a former vice president of the United States rather than as an Apple board member. He joined the Apple board in 2003, three years after losing the 2000 presidential election to George W. Bush – despite winning the popular vote.
He is known for his climate activism for which was the recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Since joining Apple, Al Gore has gained a considerable shareholding of 115,014 shares. At the time of writing, with a stock price of $352.84 a share, Gore had a shareholding in Apple worth $40,581,539.
Deirdre O’Brien
Deirdre O’Brien is the current senior vice president of retail and people at Apple. Like Jeff Williams, she reports directly to Tim Cook. She’s been at Apple for over 30 years, and her team oversees talent development, recruitment, human relations, benefits and compensation at Apple.
With a shareholding of 33,854, Deirdre O’Brien holds Apple stock worth $11,945,045 at the time of writing, using that same stock price of $352.84 a share.
More key individual Apple shareholders
The table below contains the latest SEC filings (released 3 January 2020) for Apple’s 14A statement.1 It lists the common stock holdings of current directors and executive officers – including the five that we’ve already mentioned – as well as a former employee with a significant shareholding.
Position at Apple | Share of common stock1 | Percentage of ownership | |
Arthur (Art) Levinson | Chairman of the board | 1,148,712 | * |
Tim Cook | Chief executive officer | 847,969 | * |
Jeff Williams | Chief operating officer | 122,195 | * |
Al Gore | Member of the board | 115,014 | * |
Deirdre O’Brien | Senior vice president, retail and people | 33,854 | * |
Andrea Jung | Member of the board | 33,548 | * |
Angela Ahrendts | Former senior vice president of retail | 30,848 | * |
Luca Maestri | Senior vice president and chief financial officer (CFO) | 27,448 | * |
Ronald Sugar | Member of the board | 24,714 | * |
Katherine Adams | Senior vice president and general counsel | 22,639 | * |
Susan Wagner | Member of the board | 14,809 | * |
James Bell | Member of the board | 7716 | * |
All current directors and executive officers as a group | 2,398,616 | 0.0547% |
*Amounts to less than 0.05% of the issued and outstanding shares of Apple’s common stock.
Apple largest institutional shareholders
At the time of writing (10 June 2020), only three institutional shareholders were included in Apple’s most recent SEC 14A filing as owning more than 5% of the company’s outstanding shares. Those three are The Vanguard Group, BlackRock, and Berkshire Hathaway.
Share of common stock1 | Percentage of ownership | |
The Vanguard Group | 338,533,988 | 7.72% |
BlackRock Inc | 296,598,349 | 6.77% |
Berkshire Hathaway Inc | 255,300,329 | 5.82% |
The Vanguard Group
The Vanguard Group is one of the largest investment companies in the world with $6.2 trillion in assets under management.2 The company is led by Mortimer Buckley as chairman and CEO.
The company held 338,533,988 shares of Apple as reported in Apple’s 14A SEC filing.1 Using the share price from the previous section of $352.84, The Vanguard Group’s total stake in Apple is worth $119,448,332,325 (almost $120 billion).
BlackRock
BlackRock is another of the largest investment companies in the world, with $7.47 trillion in assets under management.3 The current CEO and chairman of BlackRock is Larry Fink. Incidentally Susan Wagner – board member at Apple – is a founder, former director and current board member at BlackRock Inc.
BlackRock held 296,598,349 shares of Apple stock at the time of writing, with a value of $104,651,761,461 (almost $105 billion) at a price of $352.84 per share.
Berkshire Hathaway
Berkshire Hathaway is the investment company owned by Warren Buffet – one of the world’s richest people. The company is described as a conglomerate holding company, rather than an investment company, because it wholly owns well-known brands including Dairy Queen, Fruit of the Loom, Helzberg Diamonds and BNSF.
Berkshire Hathaway also has significant minority holdings in Kraft Heinz, American Express, Coca-Cola and Bank of America – as well as Apple. With a shareholding of 255,300,329 and using a price of $352.84 per share, Berkshire owns around $90,080,168,084 (more than $90 billion) worth of Apple stock.
Apple’s share price movements
The below screengrab is from our trading platform, and it gives an indication of Apple’s share price movements from 1 January 2020 to 10 June 2020.
As with a majority of companies around the world, Apple was affected by the coronavirus pandemic – which put a temporary halt to sales in Apple stores amid worldwide government lockdowns. But, Apple has since recovered to post its strongest share price performance to date (at the time of writing).
Apple shareholders summed up
In this article, we’ve highlighted some of the largest Apple shareholders – but they’re mainly current or former employees and institutional investment companies. If you’d like to become an Apple investor yourself, follow the steps below:
- Create an IG share dealing account
- Carry out your own fundamental and technical analysis of Apple’s share price
- Search for ‘Apple’ on our trading platform
- Select how many shares you’d like to buy
- Place your order and monitor your investment
Learn more about share dealing
When you invest in Apple with us, you’ll be eligible to receive our best commission of $0 on US shares. Our best commission is available to clients who opened three or more positions on their share dealing account in the previous month. The table below gives our best commission rates on US shares against the rates of our competitors.
FX conversion fee | US best commission | US standard commission | |
IG | 0.5% | £0 | £10 |
Hargreaves Lansdown | 1.0% | £5.95 | £11.95 |
AJ Bell | 1.0% | £9.95 | £9.95 |
This information has been prepared by IG, a trading name of IG Markets Limited. In addition to the disclaimer below, the material on this page does not contain a record of our trading prices, or an offer of, or solicitation for, a transaction in any financial instrument. IG accepts no responsibility for any use that may be made of these comments and for any consequences that result. No representation or warranty is given as to the accuracy or completeness of this information. Consequently any person acting on it does so entirely at their own risk. Any research provided does not have regard to the specific investment objectives, financial situation and needs of any specific person who may receive it. It has not been prepared in accordance with legal requirements designed to promote the independence of investment research and as such is considered to be a marketing communication. Although we are not specifically constrained from dealing ahead of our recommendations we do not seek to take advantage of them before they are provided to our clients. See full non-independent research disclaimer and quarterly summary.
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