It appeared that many of the shareholders of Apple, who attended the annual shareholders meeting, at Apple's Cupertino, California Headquarters, on Wednesday, came out dissatisfied.
Shareholders fervently wanted to know about Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ health, but they felt that the company did not provide them satisfactory information about Jobs, who absented the meeting first time due to health issues. The information provided to them was already publicly available.
Jobs' health is critical factor in deciding the price of Apple shares, because the entire tech world knows the significance of the role that Jobs plays at Apple. It was probably the reason that the Apple’s investors were feverishly seeking the answer of the questions, “Will Jobs be back at June as expected and will he have the same workload if he is?”
Jim Goldman of CNBC reported that the very first question in the shareholder Q&A session was about Jobs' health. Shareholders wanted more details on the current state of Jobs' health and the company's succession plans, as Jobs is a pancreatic cancer survivor. But, Apple disappointed most of them.
In a message to shareholder, Apple executives stated, “Jobs' stated plan to return to Apple in June hasn't changed, we regularly talk about succession plans and we haven't broken any laws in our communications about Jobs' health issues”.
Genentech CEO and co-lead director of Apple's board, Arthur Levinson, who was assigned the task of answering the inevitable questions about Jobs' health, declined to comment beyond what Jobs outlined in his Jan. 14 letter to employees.
Goldman reported that Tim Cook, Apple COO and acting CEO told shareholders the company has met all its information-disclosure obligations, and any future details it deems "important" will be disclosed to them.
According to Goldman, rather bizarre situation came upon in the meeting when one of the shareholders asked others to rise and sing "Happy Birthday" in honor of Jobs, who turned 54 yesterday.
Speaking of Jobs, after the meeting, Louis Malizia, who represented the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, said, "He is a significant asset, and anything of significance that's happening to him should be disclosed.”
But that wasn't enough for shareholders!












