Irreplaceable Jobs?
Steve Jobs privacy's come at some cost. But if Apple is concerned that its share price rises and falls with the weight of its founder, it's taken a while to show it.
The cause of Jobs's dwindling weight has fuelled rumours for over a year. And his explanation -- a hormonal imbalance only recently identified by doctors -- has left observers wondering whether he's given them the full story. Their cynicism is not surprising. Apple's done little to encourage faith in its opennness as far as its CEO's health is concerned -- Jobs is famously private.
It's questionable whether he can afford to be as the head of a publicly traded company. Should shareholders worry that his privacy takes precedence over the company's market value? (And would it have done so had that CEO not been a co-founder of the business?)
The exact details of Jobs's illness are not the issue. It's that the story's exposed (again) Apple's apparent lack of a successor. That's what's wobbled the share price.
It's impossible to imagine Apple without Jobs -- he is synonymous with the brand he helped create. He has fans. What other big business boss can boast such a thing?
He did leave the business for just over a decade and his 1996 return was only supposed to be an interim measure. (You'd think the company would've learned from that succession oversight.) But that only serves to underline how badly Apple can go wrong without him.
Jobs is not the only CEO whose name is synonymous with the business he's founded -- Bill Gates will ever be associated with Microsoft, but the company's succession plan was clear enough that when he announced his 2008 departure, it barely affected Microsoft's stock price.
As CEO, Andy Grove was Intel -- a similarly charismatic figure to Jobs, (although his handling of his health problem couldn't have been more different). But Intel, like GE, prides itself on its succession strategy.
It's hard to envisage Berkshire Hathaway under anyone but Warren Buffett, but at least he's got some candidates lined up, having joked in the 2007 annual report: "I've reluctantly discarded the notion of my continuing to manage the portfolio after my death -- abandoning my hope to give new meaning to the term 'thinking outside the box'."
Stelios Haji-Ioannou of EasyJet handed over the CEO reins to Ray Webster in preparation for the airline's 2000 flotation (and has attracted criticism for trying to wrest power back as a majority shareholder.)
Privately-owned Arcadia could probably just about survive beyond charismatic Sir Philip Green.
The Virgin Group's lacking a clear successor to Sir Richard Branson, but it has dynastic potential.
A slew of big corporations are so strongly led by their CEOs it's hard to envisage them apart -- Tesco without Sir Terry Leahy? M&S minus Sir Stuart Rose? But I can't think of one that faces Apple's dilemma. Why the board didn't tackle the issue after Gil Amelio's departure in the late 1990s is baffling; why it still ignores the problem even more so.
(Photo of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates: Joi,CC2.0)