On Tuesday, Apple's board of directors will gather to take up the question of who will replace Google CEO Eric Schmidt, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.
Schmidt recently left Apple's board after three years, citing concerns that Apple and his own company's businesses were beginning to overlap too much. Both are players in the mobile phone market (Google's Android operating system competes with Apple's iPhone) and soon will compete in desktop operating systems, when Google releases its Chrome OS.
The board could bring in a new director from the outside, but there has been talk that Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook, who assumed the helm for CEO Steve Jobs while he was on a six-month medical leave of absence earlier this year, is at least being considered.
Besides Jobs, the board has six other members: Intuit Chairman Bill Campbell, J.Crew CEO Millard Drexler, former Vice President Al Gore, Avon CEO Andrea Jung, Genentech Chairman Arthur Levinson, and former CFO of IBM and Chrysler Jerry York.
Though Apple has chosen to remain quiet about the health of CEO Steve Jobs, a prominent investor criticized the handling of the situation.
In an interview on CNBC Wednesday morning, Berkshire Hathaway CEO and iconic investor Warren Buffett said Apple should have disclosed the seriousness of Jobs' illness, describing it as a "material fact" for shareholders of the company.
"If I have any serious illness, or something coming up of an important nature, an operation or anything like that, I think the thing to do is just tell the American, the Berkshire shareholders about it. I work for 'em. Some people might think I'm important to the company. Certainly Steve Jobs is important to Apple. So it's a material fact. Whether he is facing serious surgery or not is a material fact. Whether I'm facing serious surgery is a material fact. Whether (General Electric CEO) Jeff Immelt is, I mean, so I think that's important."
Buffett's criticism--which joins a growing chorus--resonates more than others perhaps since he has dual roles as the face of his company as well as an investor in others. In this case, he's clearly taking the side of the investors. A material fact, as he references, is information necessary to make an informed decision. For Apple investors, knowing how sick Jobs actually was--forcing him to take a six-month leave of absence and receive a liver transplant two months ago--could arguably help them decide whether to put their money in Apple stock.
However, Apple has wiggle room since there aren't strict legal guidelines for companies to follow in making decisions about how and what to disclose involving the health matters of their executives.
This is also not the first time Apple has kept quiet about the status of Jobs' health. In 2004, he hid a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer for nine months, secretly undergoing surgery, and not revealing it to employees and shareholders until after the fact.
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