We’ve heard the insane sum of cash that goes into the US president’s security detail, but the CEOs of billion-dollar companies have their fair market share of bodyguards as well.
Wired reports that Apple’s (dare we say the Boy Scout of billion-dollar corporations) most recent filing earlier this month showed the company spent $310k on personal security for CEO Tim Cook.
Of course, $310k for Cook is pennies compared to other high-profile CEOs — most of whom have struggled to stay off humanity’s sh*t list.
Amazon spent around $1.6m in the 2018 fiscal year to protect Jeff Bezos, while Alphabet (Google’s parent company) laid out more than $900k to protect both Sundar Pichai and former executive chair Eric Schmidt.
Still, none of those numbers come close to the Controversy King himself: In 2017, Facebook spent $7.3m on Mark Zuckerberg’s security (roughly $20k a day) and last year the company told investors to anticipate spending $10m annually.
Zuck’s security costs are up from a lean $2.6m in 2013 (when Facebook was slightly less hated). Now that amount is reserved for Facebook’s numero 2, Sheryl Sandberg.
Per Wired, security experts speculate that Facebook’s increase from 2017 to 2018 likely has much to do with last year’s Cambridge Analytica scandal and, well… the list goes on.