Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2010/11/17/ronald_sugar_joins_apple_board/
Apple adds ex-Northrop exec to board
Sugar to sweeten Jobsian investment portfolio?
Posted in On-Prem, 17th November 2010 18:46 GMT
Apple announced on Wednesday that a new director has been added to its governing board: Ronald Sugar, recently retired chairman and CEO of defense contractor Northrop Grumman and former CFO of TRW.
"Ron is an engineer at heart, who then became a very successful business leader," said Apple CEO Steve Jobs in a prepared statement.
Among Sugar's skills as a "very successful business leader" must be the art of negotiation. As pointed out by Footnoted, Sugar walked away from Northrop this June with a sweet consulting deal, detailed in a Northrup filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission as follows:
On June 28, 2010, we entered into a Consultant Contract with Dr. Ronald D. Sugar, our former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, for a one-year period commencing on July 1, 2010. The contract calls for Dr. Sugar to provide advice to our company and to participate in meetings and events for its benefit as we may request in consideration of a monthly consulting fee of $16,680.
In an Exhibit attached to that filing, it's noted that Sugar is to "make himself available to perform services for the Company for up to three (3) days per month during the Consulting Period."
Quick math: that's $5,560 per day.
On Apple's board, Sugar will chair the Audit and Finance Committee, where he'll join directors Arthur Levinson, Bill Campbell, and about $51bn in cash and negotiable securities that some observers have said is earning less than it might.
It's fair to speculate that Jobs may ask Sugar to give those investments a look-see. ®