Apple’s annual shareholders meeting will be marked by a number of changes, the largest being the absence of co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs, according to a Monday report.
Despite his absence, Jobs will be at the center of a long-running debate over his health and importance to the company’s future.
In January, Jobs sent Wall Street mixed signals about his health, first declaring he suffered a simple hormonal imbalance and then a week later announcing a medical leave due to “more complex health” health issues.
Jobs is expected back by the end of June.
As a result of the cloud over his health and the way the company doled out conflicting information to shareholders, Wednesday’s meeting comes amidst a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation to “determine whether investors were misled,” according to Bloomberg.
One large Apple investor, the Jacob Internet Fund,told the news organization Apple’s updates on Jobs’ health status were “poor at best.”
The re-election of Jobs and other Apple board of director members is among the items expected during the meeting.
Possibly predicting the atmosphere of this week’s meeting, Apple will not stream video or audio of the annual meeting, limiting reporters to a room outside where investors will question the Cupertino, Calif.-based company.
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
