Jobs: “it wasn’t about the money”

 

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Posted on 24 Apr 2009 at 08:49

Another side to Steve Jobs has been revealed in a transcript of his account of Apple’s stock options backdating scandal.

Around 2001 and 2002 Apple illegally back-dated stock options granted to Jobs, the company’s chief executive, and other members of the company’s management team. After the backdating became public in 2006, Jobs was exonerated of any wrongdoing in an enquiry by members of the Apple board, including former US vice president Al Gore.

However Jobs was subsequently interviewed by the SEC, the US financial regulator, as part of its case against former Apple general counsel Nancy Heinen, who has since paid $2.2 million to settle charges that she backdated stocks.

Forbes magazine has since used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain a copy of Jobs’ questioning and while it does not provide the entire transcript, there are a couple of excerpts that reveal a hitherto unseen side to Jobs.

Jobs explains that he only received the the options in question after asking for them, because he felt undervalued.

“It wasn’t so much about the money,” he said. “Everybody likes to be recognised by his peers. … I felt that the board wasn’t really doing the same with me.”

He says he would have felt better if the board had come to him.

“I just felt like there is nobody looking out for me here, you know. … So I wanted them to do something, and so we talked about it. … I thought I was doing a pretty good job.”

Jobs, who is often described by those who don’t know him, as a control freak goes on to say that he doesn’t really understand the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles that Apple violated when it backdated the the options. And to other questions he reportedly says that he doesn’t know or could not recall.

But clearly the health problems that have dogged him in recent years were troubling him. At the end of the interview he thanks the SEC’s lawyers.

“Thank you. My body thanks you.”

[photo: Steve Jobs Keynote by acaben; some rights reserved]

Author: Simon Aughton