Apple Disclosures About Jobs To Face SEC Review 187
suraj.sun writes "US regulators are examining Apple Inc.'s disclosures about Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs's health problems to ensure investors weren't misled, a person familiar with the matter said.
The Securities and Exchange Commission's review doesn't mean investigators have seen evidence of wrongdoing, the person said, declining to be identified because the inquiry isn't public. Bloomberg News reported last week that Jobs is considering a liver transplant as a result of complications after treatment for cancer, according to people who are monitoring his illness."
Seems like... (Score:2, Insightful)
Bernie Maddoff was reviewed by these guys (Score:1, Insightful)
And they found nothing wrong.
Now with their necks on the line, they will make something up if needed to show that they are doing their jobs.
Practice what you preach, SEC. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll tell you what, Mr. SEC Investigator, you do a really good job sniffing out wrong-doing in the Mortgage Crisis (and that means severely pointing fingers at Congress) as well as demanding transparency in the oil trade business and I'll let you bitch about Apple.
This wouldn't be an issue at most companies.... (Score:4, Insightful)
I have to side with Jobs himself, on this one. People just need to leave him alone, and stay out of this media crusade to "get to the bottom of what's ailing him".
The ONLY reason people are worked into a frenzy (and even got the SEC involved) in Apple's case is because of the intense focus on Steve Jobs as THE man behind Apple.
(My mom is friends with a guy who went through chemotherapy for pancreatic cancer, very similar to what Jobs had. Even though he was initially doing well, they discovered some of the cancer cells had metastasized to his liver, and about 4 years later, he's looking at a possible liver transplant. So *if* Bloomberg's report is accurate -- I wouldn't be surprised at all if this is the REAL story with Jobs' health right now.)
Nonetheless, it's not doing investors or the company any good to keep harping on it, and perpetuating the idea that Apple can't function without Steve in charge!
He's not going to live forever, even if it turns out this whole thing was made up as an excuse for Jobs to give himself a 6 month vacation! There has to be a "plan B", and any decent CEO has certainly given that some thought.
IMHO, Steve Jobs already served his main purpose for Apple. He rescued the company from a downward spiral, completely revamped the product line from top to bottom and turned it into one of the biggest tech success stories out there. He set Apple on a course of being a media distributor as well as a "computer company", and extended that to the cellphone marketplace too. If nobody out there can work with THAT, after it's handed to them on a silver platter? Well, I'm not sure America has any future in tech at all!
leave steve alone! (Score:5, Insightful)
Just leave him alone! He's suffered enough, can't you all see that. Just leave the poor guy alone.
In any case, this SEC thing seems sort of silly. The SEC while it has the power to abusively coerce responses, techincally Jobs is just he CEO, not a golden child. How can his health issues be any more important than those of head of tupperware or American Toyota, who's name you don't know.
Is it because you know his name that makes his health techincally relevant? Then what about some who's names you do know, like Jack Welch, or Larry Ellison. Should they have been given annual public proctology exams since that's a high cancer risk for men their ages?
Sure the cult of Steve is an importnat phenomena to apple, but it's not a techincal criteria that I can see. It's not like Apple is somehow misrepresenting it's products or it's book value or it's liabilities to it's shareholders.
So what does the SEC have to argue here.
Re:democrats? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Seems like... (Score:2, Insightful)
A corporation is bigger than just one man, but let's put that in perspective:
Re:leave steve alone! (Score:5, Insightful)
Like it or not the stock price is linked to Steves Health. This is for several reasons, none of which the SEC cares too much about.
If Steve or the board, knowingly, withheld information they knew would have a negative ( or positive ) impact on the stock price would be breaking SEC regs.
It's not specifically about his health, but the fact that his health has a material effect on the stock price and therefore investors have a right to know enough information to make informed investment decisions. It's one of the basic requirements for a free market.
Re:leave steve alone! (Score:1, Insightful)
While Jobs's efforts have saved the company from a downward spiral, that doesn't mean that it's all on him. The executive team has hopefully learned from Jobs such that if he were to go, they could carry on. the concept of a legacy. Stocks should be based on actual production and sales, not on the health of one man. Whomever is driving this needs to not be working anymore, because it's just sensationalism.
Oh, and Steve Jobs's medical record is protected by HIPAA. So sure, SEC/Stockholders/Media Idiots can moan and whine about wanting to know, but if he chooses not to share it, they won't get it.
Sure, someone can leak it out. Then that someone will find themselves unemployed and most likely sued into submission.
Re:Practice what you preach, SEC. (Score:2, Insightful)
Sometimes I wish slashdot would just give you one mod point each day (not cumulative, just one max) just so you could vote up a really insightful comment like this one even when you aren't a mod.
Re:leave steve alone! (Score:5, Insightful)
While Jobs's efforts have saved the company from a downward spiral, that doesn't mean that it's all on him.
The parent never claimed it did. He said Apple's stock price is tied to Jobs' health. And it is. Go to Google Finance, look at the news links on Apple's stock charts. You'll see a price drop after any negative story about Jobs' health. Whether Apple would be fine without him or not is completely irrelevant.
Re:leave steve alone! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:leave steve alone! (Score:3, Insightful)
That is incorrect.
The most recent value (not current value) of a company is dependent on "actual production and sales" among other things. The stock price is the net present value of the company as per the consensus of all the buyers and sellers of the stakes in the company. The later is reality, and it actually makes more sense than the former.
The shareholders, etc. of Apple have no right to Jobs' health records. HIPAA or otherwise. BUT, take this scenario: Jobs puts out that he is sick for 10 days. Rumors fly around and the price drops. He buys up a ton of stock, and then puts out a press release that states that he is in perfect health. The stock shoots up, and he makes a ton. Now, he better be sick those 10 days else, the shareholders have a valid lawsuit for the profits that Jobs made. The fact that his health shouldn't have dropped the stock is a different issue. Same if the scenario was reversed and he (or other parties) shorted.
The SEC doesn't care about Jobs actual health. They care that the image being presented to the public is factual. He maybe in the hospital a 3rd time for heart surgery, no one needs to know that, but their business continuity plan better have a section about who takes over if he kicks the bucket.
Re:leave steve alone! (Score:4, Insightful)
So what does the SEC have to argue here.
In theory, people who have knowledge of Steve Jobs health have insider trading status.
Like it or not, the health of Job's does affect the price price.
If say, Job's doctor diagnoses him with terminal cancer and the doctor calls his broker the next day to short AAPL to kingdom come, then you've got some problem that SEC is very concerned with.
So the main question is if Apple mislead the public about Job's health in order to manipulate share price. If so, then it is a big deal.
Bullshit x 1000000 (Score:5, Insightful)
This story is complete bullshit. The implication's that SEC rules have been broken is bullshit. The Bloomberg story that is referred to has already been widely debunked as complete and utter bullshit. Using a person's health as an investment talking point is bullshit ... you have no idea what the state of his health is, you have no idea how that will affect the state of his health in the future, and further, you have no idea what the effect on Apple would be no matter what the outcome.
What makes this even worse is that any self-respecting nerd knows full well that Mr. Jobs above all other people in the tech industry has imbued his company with its own self-sustaining and unique culture. He could announce that he is taking up sailing like most billionaires and no longer has time to work at Apple and there will still be people at Apple trying to figure out how to remove more buttons from all of their products. There would still be customers because there will still be creative people who need fonts that work and color management you can rely on and a full pro audio subsystem, and Web developers who want to run Apache/PHP/Photoshop, and there would still be poseurs who buy only for the logo and teh shiny. In other words, you have to be truly ignorant of computing to think that Steve Jobs has been sitting in a room at Apple drawing up MacBook Airs on a napkin and that the whole thing would grind to a halt without him.
Plus, Apple has a huge lead in 21st century computing that everyone would love to have. Google, Nokia, Palm, and Blackberry all use Apple's WebKit as their Web rendering engine ... MPEG-4 is a standardization of Apple's QuickTime format ... the iPod has 75% market share. Right now many people outside Apple are just beginning to use stuff that Apple has been expert at for years. It is obvious they are the only organization with the technology and expertise to do a proper tablet, which is just an iPod touch HD. All that is required is to complete the resolution-independent user interface, which Mac OS X has had in developer preview mode since 2004.
The smart investor is buying Apple stock right now. They are so undervalued because investors don't understand how to read the subscription accounting that is done for the iPhone.
Re:leave steve alone! (Score:3, Insightful)
I would take that more seriously if they hadn't sat on their thumbs for the years that Darl was spouting his garbage about the SCO-IBM case.