SEC Looking Into Apple Boss Steve Job’s Illness

When you run a huge Corporation like Apple, and your Steve Jobs, you may want to think twice about trying to get the hounds off your trail when you are really sick by saying you are only having  a “relatively simple” treatment for a nutritional ailment and then decide to take a 5 month leave of absence.

Now it appears that the SEC is taking a look at Steve Jobs Illness to make sure that there was no funny business going on. As you know, when Steve took his leave of absence, Apple Stocks took a tumble. So was Steve prolonging the inevitable time off work to benefit the company or stock holders in anyway?

To bring any case, the SEC would probably have to show the company tried to benefit by withholding information about an unambiguous diagnosis, said Peter Henning, a former federal prosecutor and SEC lawyer who now teaches at Wayne State University Law School in Detroit.

“It would be difficult, and certainly a new area of the law,” Henning said. “You would have to pin down exactly what they knew, and with a health issue — unlike a merger or a decline in revenue — it’s not subject to definitive answers.”

Even though the SEC has not filed anything yet, sources close to Bloomberg.com say that word should be coming soon. I’m sure this does not make for a speedy recovery environment for Steve or Apple. More to come.

Source Bloomberg via BGR

Photo by the AP/Paul Sakuma