July 16th 2009

Matthew Lynn who is a columnist for Bloomberg wrote a very interesting article on whether the seriousness of Steven Jobs health was of material consequence to release the information earlier than when Apple actually did. I believe that this is a gray area. A line should be drawn. However the question is where the boundary between public and personal space should start for a prominent public figure. Humans are voyeuristic in nature. This is not about which celebrity is sleeping with whom. Yes there are people who feed on this but Katie Price breaking up with Peter Andre will not have as much of an effect on the world as the health of Steve Jobs or Warren Buffett. The value of companies and funds are associated with the people who lead it. Will the successor of Apple and Berkshire Hathaway be the same without Jobs or Buffett? The performance of Absolute Capital Management fell dramatically after Florian Homm who co-founded the company suddenly walked out of the company. The point of all of this is that there is a big possibility of people losing a lot of money if something had to happen to prominent people in industry. I am not insinuating that CEO's twitter their life but if there is any issue that will potentially influence a company or a fund then full disclosure should be made as soon as possible. As usual I have to bring cricket into the picture. The very next day after the first test match was over a public declaration was made that Andrew Flintoff had to undergo a scan on his knee. The results were not published but immediately Steve Harmison was called up as a precaution. However there were also pictures published of Flintoff practicing in the nets and the announcement by Flintoff that he was going to step down from Test cricket after this series. Flintoff is the talisman of the English side and a very important part. His departure will have a more profound effect on this series than if Andrew Strauss who is the captain on the side got injured. I do not know if Flintoff will play today but the English Cricket Board handled his situation in a significantly better way than Apple did with Steve Jobs.