NEW YORK: American IT giant Apple’s Chief Executive Tim Cook has announced to donate his estimated $785 million wealth to charity.
The head of the world’s largest technology corporation will donate his declared fortune after after paying for his 10-year-old nephew’s college education. “You want to be the pebble in the pond that creates the ripples for change,” Cook told the Fortune magazine.
Fortune estimated Cook’s net worth, based on his holdings of Apple stock, at about $120 million. He also holds restricted stock worth $665 million if it were to be fully vested. The 54-year-old CEO’s revelation in Fortune’s lengthy profile of him is an example of the increasingly public philanthropy of the world’s richest people.
Billionaire financier Warren Buffett is encouraging the very wealthy to give away at least half their worth in their lifetimes through the “Giving Pledge,” whose website lists such luminaries as Microsoft Corp’s Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook Inc and Oracle Corp’s Larry Ellison.
While Cook’s largesse could not begin to approach the scale of a Gates or Zuckerberg, both worth billions of dollars, the Apple CEO told Fortune he hopes to make a difference. Cook, who is not listed on the website, is known as an intensely private person who shuns the spotlight on philanthropy.
