Sadly, Apple is now stuck with a question that many people are asking, even if they feel awkward and guilty about doing so. Is Steve Jobs ill again?

The question has been around since Mr Jobs appeared at the iPhone 3G launch event in June looking very pale and gaunt, was put to Apple executives during Monday’s results conference call, and the reply did not help.

“Steve loves Apple, he serves as CEO at pleasure of Apple’s board and has no plans to leave. Steve’s health is a private matter,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s chief financial officer. That, combined with a downbeat earnings forecast, sent the company’s shares sharply lower.

Henry Blodget has retorted that Apple shareholders have a right to know whether Mr Jobs’ pancreatic cancer, for which he had surgery four years ago and seemed to have recovered, has recurred. Meanwhile, others retort that it is a private matter and we should not probe further.

With caveats, I think Mr Blodget is right. Mr Jobs’ health is clearly a material issue for Apple’s shareholders. Indeed, in many ways it is the most material issue of all. Apple’s fortunes have varied over the years according to whether Mr Jobs is in charge and he still embodies the brand.

There are lot of private matters that politicians and celebrities must endure being dragged into the public realm. Issues from whether they are straight or gay, are having affairs, or have drug-taking children or spouses, find their way into the media as a reflection of their characters.

Rightly, chief executives do not generally have to endure such scrutiny. It does not generally affect investors whether a senior executive has a racy private life or not. Providing he or she can do the job, that can be kept under wraps.

Even when executives do get ill, there is often no need for investors to be told all there is to know about their condition or their prognosis. Some take breaks to recover from conditions from cancer to depression and then return to work without the need for full disclosure.

But when a chief executive of a public company is so ill that his or her performance is seriously affected, then investors eventually have to be told. That is particularly so when he or she personifies the company.

McDonald’s was punctilious about disclosing the illness of Charlie Bell, its former chief executive, who died of colon cancer in 2004. It disclosed that he was being treated for the condition well before he eventually stepped down.

In Apple’s case, the level of investor uncertainty now means that it ought to make some disclosure about Mr Jobs’ state of health. It need not go into too much detail but it must provide some clarity.

There are few circumstances in which investors have to be told about the private life of a chief executive but this is, unfortunately, one of them.

July 23, 2008 3:50am in Technology | Comment