Maybe its a need for Silicon Valley to compete with the Oscar ceremony this weekend in Los Angeles. Maybe its just a slow news day. For whatever the reason, people have gone through Apple’s SEC Form 8-K and discovered almost 4.8 million votes against keeping Steve Jobs on the Cupertino, Calif. company’s board of directors.
Although the Apple co-founder kept his chair, a relative unknown outvoted Jobs as perhaps the most popular board member. Despite not appearing all in black or unveiling some of the sexiest technology, Ronald D. Sugar garnered the most share votes for re-election to the Apple board of directors.
Who is Sugar? Along with being the former CEO of Northrop Grumman, Sugar has pinched-hit for Apple, replacing some well-publicized departures from the board. Last year, following the death of board member Jerry York, a board member since 1997. In January, a Fortune reporter revealed York was the source for stories that Jobs had flown to Switzerland for cancer treatment. York also reportedly became frustrated by Apple’s handling of public disclosures surrounding Jobs’ previous health concerns.
In 2009, Sugar also replaced Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s departure from the Apple board after increasing rivalry between the two companies.
Of course, the voting can’t be seen as a true measure of popularity, given that 70 percent of Apple shares are held by institutions and not easily swayed by personalities. Still, the numbers provide an interesting picture inside the Apple boardroom.
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.
18 responses to “Shareholders Report: Nearly 4.8M Votes Against Keeping Jobs on Apple Board”
Hey Ed, I’d mention you by name if I copied and pasted a chart you created into my blog.
phil: don’t bother. Cunt of Mac is all about stealing stuff from elsewhere. Cheap and disgusting.
There are links to your blog in the end
but I must say, when copying something, make it clear from the start of the article
not at the very end
Interesting and useful post
As others have pointed out the chart is somewhat misleading.
The chart exaggerates, for example the difference between the highest (Sugar) and lowest (Jung) is actually less than 2%.
A single institution might hold more than 5 million shares. FMR holds 55 million, Vanguard 33 million etc.
What is always more striking about Apple is that there is so little shareholder dissatisfaction with management or board.
LOL – I noticed the same thing and got defensive claims that they “got permission” – suuuuuure they did. They could do summary articles and links but that would require writing – which is hard and stuff.
Those 5 million votes probably belonged to an idiot fund manager who shorted Apple and doesn’t want to lose a couple million bucks from his bonus.
Very interesting find, and very interesting outcome on the vote.
I’m surprised that among the biggest majority investors… there is no name there that sounds like Ibn Khalifa al-Tawfik ibn Jaffari al-Mustafa al-Saud.