This week there was a meeting of the shareholders of the Apple company and among the topics of discussion was proposed a vote by which the shareholders had to nominate the persons they would re-elect in the company's board of directors. Surprisingly, Steve Jobs came in 2nd place in the top list, being surpassed by Ronald Sugar who has the best chance of being re-elected as a member of Apple's board of directors. Ronald Sugar is the former CEO of a company specialized in the aeronautical industry and has held a seat on the company's board of directors since November of last year when the position became vacant following the death of Jerry York.
Who knows what was going on in the minds of the shareholders who produced the vote counts graphed below the fold — or even if they have minds, since 70% of Apple's shares are held by institutions. But according to the Form 8-K, nearly 4.8 million shares were cast against re-upping Steve Jobs. The least popular board member, by this measure, is Avon (SVP) CEO Andrea Jung — for the second year in a row.
It is not the fact that Steve Jobs did not come out on the 1st place that intrigues me, but the fact that certain shareholders would have voted against the extension of Steve Jobs' mandate in the company's board of directors. More precisely, votes representing 4.8 million shares would have been assigned against the extension of Steve Jobs' mandate. Although the current CEO of the company managed to return Apple to the top of the most powerful companies in the world and contributed enormously to the creation of iDevices, there are also people who "don't have his heart". I don't know how important the opinion of the respective shareholders is, but I don't think that Steve Jobs will leave Apple unless he wants to.
