How do you replace a CEO like Tim Cook or Warren Buffett?

Tim Cook seems like a nice problem for Apple’s board to have. Since he took over from Mr Steve Jobs in 2011, the iPhone-maker’s boss has lifted annual sales from US$108 billion to US$416 billion (S$540 billion), operating profit from US$34 billion to US$133 billion and market capitalisation from around US$350 billion to US$4 trillion, equivalent to roughly US$700 million for every day of his 14-year tenure.

Only

Mr Jensen Huang of Nvidia

has created more shareholder value overall, but most of it in the past two frantic, artificial intelligence (AI)-fuelled years. Only Mr Satya Nadella of Microsoft and Mr Sundar Pichai of Alphabet, two big-tech counterparts, have generated more on the average day, but check again in a few years’ time, when their tenures match Mr Cook’s today. No CEO comes close to his record of producing nearly US$1 trillion in cumulative net income.