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Apple Disclosures About Jobs To Face SEC Review
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."
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aDL78iMCdOzk
(its a question mark, not a quote mark...)
copy the url, look at it, does it look 'right' to you? ;) usually its a question mark as the first delim char before the parms.
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Apple Disclosures About Jobs Said to Face SEC Review (Update2)
By David Scheer and Connie Guglielmo
Jan. 21 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. 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.
Investors have been pressing for information on Jobs's health since June, when he appeared noticeably thinner at an Apple event. The company's stock whipsawed this month after Jobs, who battled pancreatic cancer in 2004, said he would remain CEO while seeking a "relatively simple" treatment for a nutritional ailment. Nine days later, Jobs said he would take a five-month medical leave after learning his health issues were "more complex."
"The good news flipped by the bad news makes one wonder what Apple knew," said James Cox, a law professor at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. "It's not surprising for the SEC to come in and look afterward, given the pressure and publicity regarding their handling of a lot of cases," such as criticism of the SEC's response to Bernard Madoff's alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme.
SEC spokesman John Nester declined to comment on the Apple inquiry. Steve Dowling, a spokesman for Cupertino, California- based Apple, declined to comment.
Apple will report first-quarter earnings after the market close today, followed by a conference call at 5 p.m. New York time.
Shares Rose
Apple's shares rose 4.2 percent on Jan. 5 after Jobs said he had been diagnosed with a hormone imbalance that caused him to lose weight throughout 2008 and "that has been robbing me of the proteins my body needs to be healthy." It was the first public disclosure of Jobs's health since August 2004, when he revealed he had undergone successful surgery to remove a neuroendocrine islet cell tumor, a rare, slow-growing type of cancer that affects as many as 3,000 people in the U.S. annually.
Before today, Apple stock had dropped 8.4 percent since the company disclosed Jan. 14 that Jobs, 53, would be on medical leave through June. The shares added $1.58, or 2 percent, to $79.78 in Nasdaq Stock Market trading at 9:31 a.m. New York time.
Apple has declined to provide specifics of the illness and Jobs said he won't comment further about his health. "Why don't you guys leave me alone -- why is this important?" he said in a telephone interview with Bloomberg News on Jan. 16.
Definitive Answers'
To bring any case, the SEC would probably have to show the company tried to benefit by withholding information about an unambiguous diagnosis, said Peter Henning, a former federal prosecutor and SEC lawyer who now teaches at Wayne State University Law School in Detroit.
"It would be difficult, and certainly a new area of the law," Henning said. "You would have to pin down exactly what they knew, and with a health issue -- unlike a merger or a decline in revenue -- it's not subject to definitive answers."
Corporate governance experts say shareholder interest in Jobs is unusually high because he is considered synonymous with Apple. He returned as CEO in 1997, turning the once-unprofitable maker of Macintosh computers into a successful consumer- electronics company with the iPod media player and iPhone. Jobs established himself as the face of Apple, serving as the main pitchman at every major product announcement over the past decade while yielding little time to other top executives.
"Steve Jobs himself thinks the Steve Jobs mystique is of value -- otherwise, why not have other people introduce those products over the past 10 years?" said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, associate dea
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Looking at the 3 month chart they are moving almost exactly with the market and are down about 2% less then the NASDAQ composite over that time period. Over the 1 year period they are down about 12% more than the NASDAQ composite but the movements are mostly market tracking.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
If Apple's disclosures were an attempt to influence stock prices, then it would matter. The SEC just seems to be watching for fraud like stock manipulation. That is their job, after all.
I suspect that they are interesting in the possibility that apple lied about jobs' health, not in his health per se. As TFA notes, apple is not obliged to disclose anything about jobs' health; but they decided to do so anyway. If they were lying about it, that would be an issue.
UNOS is the organization that oversees regional organ procurement and donor rules. If he were to be put on the list, he shouldn't be given any special treatment.
Public organ transplants are handled by UNOS in the United States. He is put on a waiting list. For the most part, UNOS is non-discriminatory: Wealth, fame, etc play no part in where on the list a person ends up. He moves up and down the list based on medical factors like likelihood to survive, likelihood of a match. Patients that are more likely to survive and have rarer matches are moved up. In the particular case of liver transplants, alcoholics who refuse to quit drinking are moved down, for example. In terms of donation, organ sales are illegal in the US and most of Europe. A donor (or their family) can request that the organs be targeted to a specific person.
As for private donations and third world countries, Jobs' wealth may help him. They do not help him with UNOS. Unfortunately, organ sales as you describe it is not illegal in all countries.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
But they *do* have to disclose the fact that there's a significant chance that he'll be stepping down. They don't have to say: he has liver cancer, but they do have to say: he may have to step down because of health problems.
Imagine if you weren't allowed to use roads because a bus company complained about your driving 3 times. --skunkpussy
Basically, much of what the parent said was correct. However, money can influence the process (I'm not talking about bribing, which is both unethical and illegal). Other than some serious psychological issues and/or a history of non-compliance with medical care, there is very little that disqualifies people from transplantation. A lot of it comes down to the "lottery" of finding an organ match. Steve probably would get some preferential treatment though.
IANAL, but from my understanding of the SEC regulations, it doesn't matter if his health (or the speculation thereof) does actually affect stock price, it only matters if Apple's management thought that it would. Anything that they believe might have an effect on stock price has to be disclosed (whether it does in the end or not). If there is a single e-mail among the management that says anything akin to "Don't tell the shareholders that he's sick, our stock price'll plummet", Apple very well may be in some serious trouble. On the other hand, if they can prove that they had no reason to believe it was an issue that would manipulate stock price, the SEC doesn't have a leg to stand on.
MPEG-4 is a standardization of Apple's QuickTime format
From Apple's MPEG-4 page:
I hope you did more research for the rest of the 'facts' in your post.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.