Apple Board to Former CFO: “The Keys to the Bus Please, Fred.”
by John Paczkowski
Posted on April 26, 2007 at 9:11 AM PT
Steve and Fred were great buddies from 1997
to 2004.”
That’s what Charles Wolf, president of Wolf Insights, had to say yesterday about former Apple CFO Fred Anderson and the sucker punch he threw at CEO Steve Jobs yesterday (see “I Know It Was You, Fredo. You Broke My Heart. You Broke My Heart!” and “Digital Daily Video 2007.04.25“). Which pretty much says it all, because “great buddies” is about the last phrase you’d use to describe the two men in 2007. Mortal enemies is more like it–certainly now that Apple has responded in kind to Anderson’s statement throwing him back under the bus he’d commandeered and attempted to run down Jobs in.
On Wednesday afternoon, Apple board members Bill Campbell, Millard Drexler, Al Gore Jr., Arthur D. Levinson, Eric Schmidt and Jerry York rose to Jobs’s defense, saying they stood by an internal investigation that had cleared him of any wrongdoing with regard to options backdating. “We are not going to enter into a public debate with Fred Anderson or his lawyer,” the board said in a terse statement. “Steve Jobs cooperated fully with Apple’s independent investigation and with the government’s investigation of stock option grants at Apple. The SEC investigated the matter thoroughly and its complaint speaks for itself, in terms of what it says, what it does not say, who it charges, and who it does not charge. We have complete confidence in the conclusions of Apple’s independent investigation, and in Steve’s integrity and his ability to lead Apple.”
