jan. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs could be facing surgery to remove his pancreas, doctors say.
Jobs said yesterday he’s taking a five-month leave of absence after discovering that his health problems are “more complex” than he thought last week.
Jobs had a procedure similar to a Whipple operation, which involves removing parts of the pancreas, bile duct and small intestine, after he was diagnosed with a rare type of pancreatic cancer in 2004. A potential side effect of this procedure is that the organ has to be removed to prevent pancreatic leak, and the patient has to be kept alive with insulin to regulate blood sugar, said Robert Thomas, head of surgery at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne.
“You might have to take the rest of the pancreas out,” said Thomas, 66, who first performed the Whipple’s procedure more than 20 years ago. “You’re on significant doses of insulin, and it’s not easy to manage. The person has the risk of severe diabetes.”
Jobs, who handed day-to-day operations to Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook, said he will remain involved in “major strategic decisions.”
Apple’s unwillingness to provide details on Jobs’s health has frustrated investors, who have watched the shares plummet with each new rumor about his condition. Apple didn’t give any details about Jobs’s health even as he appeared increasingly thin in 2008, saying only it was a private matter. Jobs said last week that he is suffering from a “hormone imbalance” that caused him to lose weight.
Shares Plunge
Apple, based in Cupertino, California, fell as much as 11 percent in extended trading yesterday after Jobs, 53, said he would remain CEO while taking a medical leave of absence until the end of June. Just last week, Jobs said his treatment should be “simple and straightforward.”
“There’s been too little information, and the information that’s come out has been vague -- creating more concern rather than conveying a sense of certainty,” said Nell Minow, founder of the Corporate Library, a research firm specializing in corporate governance based in Portland, Maine. “They have achieved confusion, and a sense of being unsettled.”
Apple is not providing information beyond the statement, said spokesman Steve Dowling. The company’s directors, including former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and Google Inc. CEO Eric Schmidt, either couldn’t be reached or declined to comment.
“What they have done is the extraordinary accomplishment of coming out with a press release that is more opaque than the last one,” said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, associate dean of the Yale University School of Management. “They have now surrendered their credibility.”
‘Not Healthy’
Jobs, who co-founded Apple in 1976, returned as CEO in 1997 and has revived the Macintosh computer brand while pushing the company into new markets with the iPod media player and iPhone. He rarely gives interviews and once had a biography of him pulled from Apple’s corporate store. Andy Hertzfeld, one of the main architects of the Mac operating software, wrote in his book that those who worked with Jobs said he was surrounded by a “reality distortion field.”
Jobs hasn’t been seen in public since October.
“This should not have gone on this long -- it’s not healthy for the business,” said Charles Elson, director of the University of Delaware’s John Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance. “The fact the issue has played around for months makes you wonder at the responsiveness of the board.”
Jobs disclosed in August 2004 that he had surgery to remove a tumor related to a rare form of pancreatic cancer that wouldn’t require chemotherapy or radiation. Cook ran Apple while Jobs took a monthlong leave.
Cancer Surgery
Jobs told Apple’s board about his cancer and directors decided to say nothing, Fortune reported in March 2008. Larry Sonsini, the company’s attorney, told directors that Jobs’s right to privacy topped disclosure rules, the magazine said. Sonsini declined to comment yesterday.
Jobs appeared thinner while introducing the iPhone 3G at Apple’s developers’ conference in June last year, prompting investors to raise questions about his health. The company said at the time he was suffering from a “common bug.”
Jobs continued to appear frail at company events later in the year. Rumors escalated last month when Apple said Jobs wouldn’t deliver the keynote address at the Macworld conference in San Francisco -- ending an 11-year run.
Last week, Jobs said he was suffering a hormone imbalance that had caused him to lose weight and that the remedy is “relatively simple.”
‘Incomplete’
That disclosure “will strike many as incomplete,” in light of yesterday’s announcement, said John Coffee, a securities law professor at Columbia Law School in New York.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission may examine whether Jobs or Apple purposely misled investors about his condition, Coffee said. If the stock drops dramatically, shareholders may sue, Coffee said.
Some may give Jobs the benefit of the doubt. In December 1986, after MCI Communications Corp. founder Bill McGowan had a heart attack, two weeks passed before the company made an announcement. Four months later, when McGowan had a heart transplant, the company again was silent for several weeks. McGowan died in 1992.
Apple and Jobs may have made the disclosure last week in good faith, said Joe Grundfest, a professor of capital markets, corporate governance and securities litigation at Stanford University.
‘Unusual and Complicated’
“Mr. Jobs has an unusual and complicated medical condition,” Grundfest said. “When conditions are complicated, physicians have difficulty making clear decisions.”
Still, the pressure now is on Apple’s board to provide more information on the events leading up to Jobs’s decision to take leave, said James Post, a professor of management at Boston University.
“Has Steve Jobs and Apple’s board played fair with investors? There are a lot of unhappy and dissatisfied investors who are going to say the answer is no,” Post said. “The board members may not really answer the question of what did they know and when did they know it until there’s a discovery process in a lawsuit.”
sources:http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=a6EZTtgfZyRg&refer=news
