The report that Apple CEO Steve Jobs had suffered a heart attack may just have been a teenage prank, Bloomberg News reports.Apple stock plummeted in the hours after the report was posted Oct. 3, losing more than 5 percent of its value, or $4.8 billion in market capitalization, before the Cupertino, Calif.-based company issued a denial. The stock rebounded somewhat to finish the day down 3 percent.
The SEC immediately launched a probe into possible insider trading, but may have to back off if it turns out the hoaxer had no financial stake in Apple.
In mid-2004, Jobs told Apple employees that he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and was briefly led to believe he had only 6 months to live, but had undergone surgery to successfully remove the cancerous tissue.
Rumors began swirling again when Jobs, widely regarded as indispensable to Apple's success, appeared startingly thin at a company event in June 2008. Jobs asserted he was cancer-free.
In late August, Bloomberg accidentally sent a prewritten obituary of Jobs to its thousands of financial-information subscribers. It was immediately retracted.
No comments:
Post a Comment