Angry Apple Shareholders Mad Enough To Sue?…. And I Thought Just The Fanbois Would Freak
I should have seen this coming a mile away, but I’ve been too concerned about how Apple fanbois would react to the temporary departure of God Steve Jobs to consider a shareholder lawsuit as a possibility in this blog.
You see, Apple is a public company. As such they have a legal requirement to report to shareholders all sorts of information. Some of Apple’s shareholders argue that this extends to the health of God Steve Jobs. If you take the view that Apple has been less than truthful with that information which caused the stock value to drop, you have the perfect conditions for a lawsuit:
Larry Sucharow, chairman of the New York law firm Labaton Sucharow, which specialises in investor lawsuits, said it’s too early to tell whether Apple is in legal hot water.
There is no question, he said, that Jobs’ health, to the extent that it affects his ability to run Apple, is material, even if a less prominent CEO’s health wouldn’t be material. But the deciding factor will not be how much Apple’s stock moved on the news of the day. The risk of a chief executive falling ill is one of many investors must consider. At its core, this matter will be decided once it comes out who at Apple knew what about Jobs’ health – and when.
“A company and its spokespeople are always obligated, when they speak, to tell the complete truth. You can’t tell a half truth without telling the other half,” he said in an interview on Thursday.
I’ve been in and around the Apple world at various levels since the late 1990’s. My experience has been that Apple either says nothing until they have to, or they play fast and loose with the facts. Whether that behavior will result in them being sued and that suit being successful, I can’t say. IANAL. Of course that assumes that they have played fast and loose with the facts in this case.
Perhaps a lawer would care to comment on this.
February 8, 2009 at 6:03 pm
Here is how it’s going to go down. Shits gonna hit the fan. The board of directors is going to destroy the company. When Jobs returned in 97 he replaced the board of directors with his pics. All who have been appointed to the apple board since then have been chosen by jobs personally. The apple board’s role is supposed to represent shareholders,,, but this is apple. The boards role is to represent JObs. They’re there to protect him and his authority from angry shareholders. This is the opposite of what is done in a publicly traded company as are alot of things at apple.
Anyway we know there is no sucession plan. If he dies (which is going to happen soon) shareholders will revolt against the board and toss them. A new board will be appointed. This board won’t understand the apple culture and way of thinking, they’ll appoint a norm new CEO. Lots of top executives and managers will quit in disgust,,, they’ll be replaced by more norms who don’t understand the apple way….. the company will then decend into mediocraty..
My prediction is 1st or 2nd week of march, pretty soon. Sell apple stock now if you have any.