Apple's senior execs dominate top 5 best-paid

When it comes to compensation, these days it's good to be one of Apple's top executives.

During Apple's 2012 fiscal year, four of its executives landed in the top five for highest compensation at a Standard & Poor's 500 company. But the folks that made it into that list might surprise you.

According to Bloomberg BusinessWeek, which collected compensation data from some of the world's top executives, Apple senior vice president of technologies, Bob Mansfield; CFO Peter Oppenheimer; general counsel Bruce Sewell; and operations chief Jeff Williams all made it into the top five for highest compensation.

Mansfield led the pack among his colleagues, earning a whopping $85.5 million during the company's 2012 fiscal year. Sewell raked in $69 million, according to Bloomberg, while Williams nabbed $68.7 million. Oppenheimer was just behind him with $68.6 million in compensation.

Nearly all of the compensation for those executives came in the form of stock; all of them earned a base salary of $805,400. According to Apple, it decided to reward its top executives handsomely "in order to retain the company's executive team during the CEO transition" from Steve Jobs to Tim Cook.

And what about Cook, boss of the aforementioned quartet of Apple executives? He could only muster a $4.17 million package, ranking him in 1,016th place in Bloomberg BusinessWeek's study. But don't feel too bad for him: among other things, in 2011 he received a $378 million restricted stock award.

None of Apple's executives, meanwhile, could match Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, who walked away with a staggering $96.2 million in total compensation last year.