Warren Buffet asserts: “If I have any serious illness, or something coming up of an important nature, an operation or anything like that, I think the thing to do is just tell – the Berkshire shareholders about it. I work for them. They’re going to find out about it anyway, so I don’t see a big privacy issue or anything of the sort.”
The fact that Steve Jobs’ presence and health are materially relevant to the company and thus its shareholders, it is Apple’s and Jobs’ fiduciary responsibility to keep the public updated on the status of Jobs’ health. If he did not want to be subject to such public scrutiny, he has every right to resign and let someone else take over his role. However, because he still remains the CEO of Apple, the shareholders deserve to know everything that may affect the value of their holdings.
It was wrong for Apple to cover the stories up. It’s even more wrong for it to encourage others to cover it up–the hospital in which Jobs got the surgery (ironically, although there are patients waiting for more than a year for a liver, he was one to receive the first available liver, which smells of improper use of money, but that’s another topic) reported that they did not admit Steve Jobs.
What a lie!