Nvidia is now worth 4.57 trillion USD surpasses Apple

Nvidia passed Apple

in market value on Tuesday, once again becoming the most valuable publicly-traded company in the world.

Shares of the chipmaker rose over 2% on Tuesday, and shares are up about 5% so far in 2025 after rising 171% in 2024 and nearly 239% in 2023, reflecting insatiable demand for the company’s artificial intelligence chips.

Meanwhile, Apple shares slid 3% on Tuesday. They’re now down 11% this year after gaining 30% in 2024. The iPhone maker has developed its Apple Intelligence suite of AI features for its phones and laptops, but its business doesn’t have the same level of exposure to the AI boom.

Nvidia has the vast majority of market share for graphics processing units, or GPUs, which have become essential for developing and deploying AI software such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT. While revenue growth has slowed, it still nearly doubled to $35.08 billion in the most recent quarter.

Apple was the first company to reach the $1 trillion, $2 trillion and $3 trillion market cap milestones. Nvidia previously passed Apple in June and then again in November.

At Tuesday’s close, Nvidia had a market cap of about $3.45 trillion, versus Apple at $3.35 trillion.Microsoft is just behind them at $3.2 trillion. A major buyer of Nvidia’s GPUs, Microsoft said earlier this month that it expected to spend $80 billion on AI data centers in fiscal 2025.

In November, Nvidia joined the Dow Industrial Average, replacing Intel, and joining Apple and Microsoft in the blue-chip index.

 

---

The Trillion Dollar Companies

Edited by

Published on September 15, 2025 | 4 min read

These CEOs Got Paid $100+ Million Each To Quit

Rob Wile, Jan. 15, 2012,

When Gene Isenberg stepped down as CEO of Nabors Industries last fall, the company paid him $100,000,000 in cash as part of his employment agreement.
But that’s chump change.
GMI Ratings recently published a report listing the 21 largest severance packages since 2000.  The study included final year salary, annual bonus.  It also included stock and option awards, pensions and other deferred compensation, which accounted for around 80% of the package.
All of the 21 packages were bigger than $100,000,000.

 

Tom Freston — $100,839,772

Wikimedia
Company: Viacom
Tenure: 9 months
Freston was famously fired by Sumner Redstone in 2006 for having failed to acquire MySpace. But he still received a monster pay package during his last year, which include severance and perks worth more than $71 million. He now runs Firefly3 LLC, a media consulting and investment group.
Source: GMI

Bob Simpson — $103,485,972

Baylor University
Company: XTO Energy Inc.
Tenure: 22 years
Exxon’s purchase of XTO in 2008 netted Simpson Exxon stock options ultimately worth more $70 million. He also saw a final-year bonus of $30 million.
Source: GMI

Leonard Schaeffer — $119,041,000

University of California-Berkeley
Company: WellPoint Health Networks
Tenure: 12 years
Schaeffer merged health plan provider WellPoint with Anthem in 2005, negotiating a deferred compensation and pension plan that netted him a lump sum payment of over $68 million.
Source: GMI

Meg Whitman, eBay — $120,427,360

HP.com
Company: eBay
Tenure: 10 years
Whitman’s exit package was almost all equity — nearly $117 million. She promptly spent most of that on an unsuccessful bid for governor of California. She now heads HP.
Source: GMI

George David — $122,631,309

Boston College
Company: United Technologies Corporation
Tenure: 14 years
David had a successful 14-year run at UTC. Financial writer Michael Brush described Mr. David’s 2004 compensation of $88.7 million as equivalent to taxpayers paying for “one president, a vice president, 535 lawmakers on Capitol Hill, and nine Supreme Court justices.”
Source: GMI

Wallace Malone — $125,292,818

SouthTrust Corporation
Company: SouthTrust/Wachovia
Tenure: 23 years
Wachovia bought SouthTrust for $14 billion in 2004. Malone, SouthTrust’s CEO since the early 80s, signed up for a deferred compensation plan worth over $34 million and potential severance in excess of $100 million. He stayed on for just a year and a half and ended up with a pension and deferred compensation of over $72 million.
Source: GMI

Joel Gemunder. — $146,001,476

Forbes
Company: Omnicare Inc
Tenure: 9 years
Gemunder hit the ejection button in 2010 in advance of an ugly Q2 earnings release, jumping away with pension and deferred earnings of $102 million and $17 million in perks and severance.
Source: GMI

Jerry Grundhofer — $159,064,090

CityBizList.com
Company: U.S. Bancorp
Tenure: 5 years
For just five years of service at the Minneapolis-based lender, Grundhofer earned deferred compensation worth more than $111 million. He’s probably been the busiest of anyone on this list since stepping down, having served In June he was named chairman of Spanish banking giant Banco Santander’s U.S. division, which includes Sovereign Bank.

Stan O’Neal — $161,500,000

Alcoa
Company: Merrill Lynch
Tenure: 5 years
O’Neal presided over Merrill’s collapse in the subprime crisis. Boardmembers allowed him to retire in 2007, but he forfeited pension, perks and deferred compensation worth $54 million. Even still, he walked away with  equity profits worth over $160 million.
Source: GMI

Bob Ulrich — $164,162,612

Muckety
Company: Target
Tenure: 14 years
Under Ulrich’s leadership, Target sales tripled and profits rose by 900 percent. He walked away with a pension and deferred compensation worth $138 million.
Source: GMI

Jim Kilts — $164,532,192

Creighton University
Company: Gillette
Tenure: 5 years
After just five years helming the storied shaving company, Kilts sold Gillette to Procter & Gamble for $57 billion in 2005. His reward: stock options and severance worth nearly $165 million.
Source: GMI

Tom Ryan — $185,415,435

BizJournals.com
Company: CVS Caremark
Tenure: 13 years
Ryan presided over CVS’ merger with Caremark in 2006. The deal eventually led to an investigation by the F.T.C. into anti-competitive practices that was just settled Thursday with the company agreeing to pay $5 million on a much smaller deceptive pricing charge. Ryan stepped down last year with a pension and deferred compensation package of $131 million. He’ll get the pension, $58 million, as a lump sum.
Source: GMI

Hank McKinnell — $188,329,553

OECD
Company: Pfizer
Tenure: 5 years
During McKinnell’s tenure at Pfizer CEO, the company saw $140 billion in losses. At the final shareholder meeting of his tenure, a plane famously flew overhead with a banner reading, “Give It Back, Hank!” The sign failed: McKinnell received a pension of $161.6 million, the largest of anyone in GMI’s report.
Source: GMI

Lou Gerstner — $189,005,929

Harvard Business School
Company: IBM
Tenure: 9 years
Gerstener’s post-CEO consulting contract called for 20 years’ access to IBM aircraft, cars, home security and financial planning assistance. His equity profits were worth $155 million.
Source: GMI

Fred Hassan — $189,352,324

ECPMag.com
Company: Schering-Plough/Merck & Co.
Tenure: 6 years
Hassan took a severance after just six years as CEO of Schering-Plough after the company was bought by Merck & Co. for $41 billion. His pension was worth $98 million.
Source: GMI

John Kanas — $214,300,000

Brookhaven Hospital
Company: North Fork Bank
Tenure: 29 years
Kanas stepped down from North Fork after the Long Island-based bank was bought by Capital One for $14.6 billion in 2006. In total, his equity profits and perquisites totaled $213 million (pension was worth just $1 million).
Source: GMI

Bob Nardelli — $223,290,123

Erik S. Lesser/Getty
Company: Home Depot
Tenure: 6 years
After becoming embroiled with shareholders over his annual compensation (which in 2006 reached $131 million), Nardelli was ousted by shareholders, but not before taking home a severance package that alone was worth more than $100 million.
Source: GMI

Ed Whitacre — $230,048,463

John F. Martin for General Motors
Company: AT&T
Tenure: 17 years
Upon retiring Whitacre walked away with a pension of $160 million, at the time the largest ever. Other perks included home security, use of the corporate jet, country club fees and “automobile benefits” of $24,000 a year.
Source: GMI

Bill McGuire — $285,996,009

Philanthropy.com
Company: UnitedHealth Group Inc.
Tenure: 15 years
McGuire got the boot in 2006 after coming under fire for improperly backdating stock options. He was forced to relinquish compensation totaling $620 million and pay a $7 million fine to the SEC. But his equity profits ended up totaling more than $180 million, and his pension was worth almost $103 million.
Source: GMI

Lee Raymond — $320,599,861

SEC
Company: Exxon
Tenure: 12 years
Raymond stepped down after 12 years having turned Exxon into one of the largest companies on earth, raising the company’s profits from $5 billion to over $25 billion.
Source: GMI

Jack Welch — $417,361,902

Jack Welch Management Institute
Company: General Electric
Source: 20 years
Besides taking top spot for corporate severance packages, Welch’s retirement also led to G.E. having to increase disclosure of perks in public filings after it was revealed he’d obfuscated his extensive use of the company’s jet, a New York apartment and box seats at Red Sox games. Still, Welch, now 76, earns $9 million a year for the rest of his life.
Source: GMI

 

---

 

Inverters and Deserters.
Offshore Shell Games 2014

---

 The Use of Offshore Tax Havens by Fortune 500 Companies

Executive Summary

Many large U.S.-based multinational cor­porations avoid paying U.S. taxes by using accounting tricks to make profits made in America appear to be generated in offshore tax havens—countries with minimal or no taxes. By booking profits to subsidiaries registered in tax havens, multinational corporations are able to avoid an estimated $90 billion in fed­eral income taxes each year. These subsidiaries are often shell companies with few, if any em­ployees, and which engage in little to no real business activity.

Congress has left loopholes in our tax code that allow this tax avoidance, which forces ordinary Americans to make up the difference. Every dollar in taxes that corporations avoid by using tax havens must be balanced by higher taxes on individuals, cuts to public investments and public services, or increased federal debt.

This study examines the use of tax havens by Fortune 500 companies in 2013. It reveals that tax haven use is ubiquitous among America’s largest companies, but a narrow set of compa­nies benefit disproportionately.

Most of America’s largest corporations maintain subsidiaries in offshore tax ha­vens. At least 362 companies, making up 72 percent of the Fortune 500, operate subsid­iaries in tax haven jurisdictions as of 2013.

• All told, these 362 companies maintain at least 7,827 tax haven subsidiaries.

• The 30 companies with the most money officially booked offshore for tax purposes collectively operate 1,357 tax haven subsid­iaries.

Approximately 64 percent of the companies with any tax haven subsidiaries registered at least one in Bermuda or the Cayman Islands—two notorious tax havens. Fur­thermore, the profits that all American multi­nationals—not just Fortune 500 companies—collectively claim were earned in these island nations in 2010 totaled 1,643 percent and 1,600 percent of each country’s entire yearly economic output, respectively.

Six percent of Fortune 500 companies ac­count for over 60 percent of the profits re­ported offshore for tax purposes. These 30 companies with the most money offshore—out of the 287 that report offshore profits—collectively book $1.2 trillion overseas for tax purposes.

Only 55 Fortune 500 companies disclose what they would expect to pay in U.S. taxes if these profits were not officially booked offshore. All told, these 55 companies would collectively owe $147.5 billion in ad­ditional federal taxes. To put this enormous sum in context, it represents more than the en­tire state budgets of California, Virginia, and Indiana combined. Based on these 55 cor­porations’ public disclosures, the average tax rate that they have collectively paid to other countries on this income is just 6.7 percent, suggesting that a large portion of this offshore money is booked to tax havens. This list includes:

• Apple: Apple has booked $111.3 billion offshore—more than any other company. It would owe $36.4 billion in U.S. taxes if these profits were not officially held off­shore for tax purposes. A 2013 Senate in­vestigation found that Apple has structured two Irish subsidiaries to be tax residents of neither the U.S.—where they are managed and controlled—nor Ireland—where they are incorporated. This arrangement en­sures that they pay no taxes to any govern­ment on the lion’s share of their offshore profits.
• American Express: The credit card com­pany officially reports $9.6 billion offshore for tax purposes on which it would other­wise owe $3 billion in U.S. taxes. That im­plies that American Express currently pays only a 3.8 percent tax rate on its offshore profits to foreign governments, suggesting that most of the money is booked in tax ha­vens levying little to no tax. American Ex­press maintains 23 subsidiaries in offshore tax havens.
• Nike: The sneaker giant officially holds $6.7 billion offshore for tax purposes, on which it would otherwise owe $2.2 billion in U.S. taxes. That implies Nike pays a mere 2.2 percent tax rate to foreign governments on those offshore profits, suggesting that nearly all of the money is officially held by subsidiaries in tax havens. Nike does this in part by licensing the trademarks for some of its products to 12 subsidiaries in Bermu­da to which it then pays royalties.

Some companies that report a significant amount of money offshore maintain hun­dreds of subsidiaries in tax havens, includ­ing the following:

• Bank of America reports having 264 sub­sidiaries in offshore tax havens—more than any other company. The bank officially holds $17 billion offshore for tax purposes, on which it would otherwise owe $4.3 bil­lion in U.S. taxes. That means it currently pays a ten percent tax rate to foreign gov­ernments on the profits it has booked off­shore, implying much of those profits are booked to tax havens.
• PepsiCo maintains 137 subsidiaries in off­shore tax havens. The soft drink maker re­ports holding $34.1 billion offshore for tax purposes, though it does not disclose what its estimated tax bill would be if it didn’t keep those profits booked offshore for tax purposes.
• Pfizer, the world’s largest drug maker, oper­ates 128 subsidiaries in tax havens and offi­cially holds $69 billion in profits offshore for tax purposes, the third highest among the Fortune 500. Pfizer recently attempted the acquisition of a smaller foreign competitor so it could reincorporate on paper as a “for­eign company.” Pulling this off would have allowed the company a tax-free way to use its supposedly offshore profits in the U.S.

Corporations that disclose fewer tax haven subsidiaries do not necessarily dodge fewer taxes. Many companies have disclosed fewer tax haven subsidiaries, all the while increas­ing the amount of cash they keep offshore. For some companies, their actual number of tax haven subsidiaries may be substantially greater

than what they disclose in the official docu­ments used for this study. For others, it suggests that they are booking larger amounts of income to fewer tax haven subsidiaries.

Consider:

• Citigroup reported operating 427 tax hav­en subsidiaries in 2008 but disclosed only 21 in 2013. Over that time period, Citigroup more than doubled the amount of cash it re­ported holding offshore. The company cur­rently pays an 8.3 percent tax rate offshore, implying that most of those profits have been booked to low- or no-tax jurisdictions.

• Google reported operating 25 subsidiar­ies in tax havens in 2009, but since 2010 only discloses two, both in Ireland. During that period, it increased the amount of cash it reported offshore from $7.7 billion to $38.9 billion. An academic analysis found that as of 2012, the 23 no-longer-disclosed tax haven subsidiaries were still operating.

• Microsoft, which reported operating 10 subsidiaries in tax havens in 2007, disclosed only five in 2013. During this same time period, the company increased the amount of money it reported holding offshore by more than 12 times. Microsoft currently pays a tax rate of just 3 percent to foreign governments on those profits, suggesting that most of the cash is booked to tax ha­vens.

Strong action to prevent corporations from using offshore tax havens will re­store basic fairness to the tax system, make it easier to avoid large budget deficits, and improve the functioning of markets.

There are clear policy solutions policy­makers can enact to crack down on tax haven abuse. Policymakers should end in­centives for companies to shift profits off­shore, close the most egregious offshore loopholes, and increase transparency.

Introduction

Ugland House is a modest five-story office building in the Cayman Islands, yet it is the registered address for 18,857 companies.1 The Cayman Islands, like many other offshore tax havens, levies no income taxes on companies incorporated there. Simply by registering sub­sidiaries in the Cayman Islands, U.S. com­panies can use legal accounting gimmicks to make much of their U.S.-earned profits appear to be earned in the Caymans and pay no taxes on them.

The vast majority of subsidiaries registered at Ugland House have no physical presence in the Caymans other than a post office box. About half of these companies have their billing ad­dress in the U.S., even while they are officially registered in the Caymans.2 This unabashedly false corporate “presence” is one of the hall­marks of a tax haven subsidiary.

Companies can avoid paying taxes by booking profits to a tax haven because U.S. tax laws al­low them to defer paying U.S. taxes on profits they report are earned abroad until they ”repa­triate” the money to the United States. Cor­porations receive a dollar-for-dollar tax credit for the taxes they pay to foreign governments in order to avoid double taxation. Many U.S. companies game this system by using loop­holes that let them disguise profits legitimately made in the U.S. as “foreign” profits earned by a subsidiary in a tax haven.

Offshore accounting gimmicks by multina­tional corporations have created a disconnect between where companies locate their actual workforce and investments, on one hand, and where they claim to have earned profits, on the other. The Congressional Research Service found that in 2008, American multinational companies collectively reported 43 percent of their foreign earnings in five small tax haven countries: Bermuda, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. Yet these coun­tries accounted for only 4 percent of the com­panies’ foreign workforce and just 7 percent of their foreign investment. By contrast, American multinationals reported earning just 14 percent of their profits in major U.S. trading partners with higher taxes—Australia, Canada, the UK, Germany, and Mexico—which accounted for 40 percent of their foreign workforce and 34 percent of their foreign investment.5 The IRS released data this year showing that American multinationals collectively reported in 2010 that 54 percent of their foreign earnings were on the books in 12 notorious tax havens (see table 4 on pg. 14).6

Source: Citizens for Tax Justice
Link to full article: http://ctj.org/ctjreports/2014/06/offshore_shell_games_2014.php#.VAc5lkgQtUo

---

 

Link to full story: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/08/06/these-are-the-companies-abandoning-the-u-s-to-dodge-taxes/