Tim Cook joins billionaires' club after rise in Apple's market cap

(Image: Reuters)

As Apple's market valuation nears $2 trillion, its Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Tim Cook has entered the billionaires' club.Cook's net worth has crossed the $1 billion mark, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, after Apple's share price rose 5 percent last week. 

Josh Rosenstock, a spokesman for Apple, declined to comment when contacted by Bloomberg.

The bulk of Cook's wealth comes from equity awards he has received since joining the California-based company in 1998, the news agency reported. 

When compared with founder-CEOs such as Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon's Jeff Bezos, who own significant stakes in their companies, Cook owns a smaller stake in Apple, the report said.

In 2015, Cook said he intends to give most of his wealth away and has already gifted million of dollars worth of Apple shares, the report said.

When Cook took over as Apple's CEO in 2011, he was awarded restricted shares, with the equity paid out in annual increments, Bloomberg reported. Cook will receive the ninth annual increment from this award, which contains 560,000 shares, later in August unless there is a plunge in Apple's share price.

On July 31, Apple had briefly overtaken Saudi Aramco to become the world's most valued publicly listed company, Reuters reported.