14 DAY TRIAL // Breaking News! Apparently Jobs is not the perfect money-making machine. The Cupertino CEO surely knows when and what to speculate to get his cash (feds seem to think he knows that a little too well, but that's another story). But as Fortune reports, the mighty executive could have made a little financial mistake some few years ago. According to Fortune, this little mistake may have cost Jobs little less than 3 billion US dollars. (I can't believe I'm referring to $300 million as 'little.')
The report says Jobs accepted a huge stock option grant in 2000 (Fortune Magazine calculated it to be worth $872 million, at the time), but the Apple CEO evaluated the stock "penniless" and eventually traded it in along with another large stock options grant for a considerable sum of restricted shares.
Those restricted shares he got then are said to be worth today around $848 million, but the stock options Jobs gave up to acquire his current shares would be worth today over $3.6 billion. And this is how Jobs could have had an extra $2.7 billion today. Aren't you sorry for the poor man?
Fortune Magazine has published a story back in 2001 about this stock option grant and they say they received a response to the story from none other than the Apple executive himself. He reportedly was so convinced the stock was worthless he offered to sell that stock to the magazine for half the price they had calculated, namely $436 million.
Fortune turned down the offer since they did not dispose of such a huge capital (not surprisingly). "We should have hocked the office furniture, broken our kids' piggy banks, and taken the deal," says now Fortune Magazine.
Well, if what they say is true, than yes, people, you should have. Either way, who needs the burden of $3 billion dollars, right?