* Page reassures staff, Schmidt says Page has lost his voice
* Page to be sidelined from two more events
* Governance experts say Street may need more details later
* CEO’s medical condition still not known
By Alexei Oreskovic
SAN FRANCISCO, June 22 (Reuters) – Google Inc Chief
Executive Larry Page has reassured employees about his health,
but the company on Friday shed little additional light on an
unspecified condition affecting his voice that will sideline him
from two high-profile events in the coming weeks.
Page told employees in an email on Thursday that there was
“nothing seriously wrong with me,” according to a source who had
seen an internal staff memo.
The 39-year-old Google co-founder sat out his company’s
annual shareholders’ meeting on Thursday because he had “lost
his voice,” according to Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt,
who informed attendees of the news at the start of the event.
The condition will also cause Page to miss Google’s annual
developer conference next week as well as its quarterly results
announcement next month.
Page continues to run Google’s business, but has been asked
to rest his voice, according to a Google spokeswoman. The
company declined further comment on his condition.
The prolonged absence from the public spotlight raises
questions about his condition, and the company’s obligation to
disclose issues of concern to shareholders.
Corporate governance experts say Google has met minimal
disclosure requirements but will face increasing pressure while
Page remains out of sight.
On Friday, Google’s shares rose 1.1 percent to $571.48,
lifted along with the rest of the Nasdaq.
“It gets them over the first disclosure hurdle, that is
they’ve alerted shareholders to the fact he’s going to have this
health effect,” said James Post, a professor of management at
Boston University who specializes in corporate governance
issues. “The tough questions still lie ahead, and there will be
continued pressure to keep answering those tough questions.”
While many people, including senior business executives,
prefer to keep health matters private, public company CEOs have
responsibilities to a “wide set of constituents, some of whom
have a legitimate claim to know about material information,”
said Post.
The issue came to the fore several years ago when Apple Inc
was criticized for being less than forthright about the
health of CEO Steve Jobs, who died in October after a long
struggle with pancreatic cancer.
“With the concerns over Steve Jobs, people are quick to jump
to a conclusion that may not be the right conclusion to jump
to,” said Needham & company analyst Kerry Rice.
Page’s health could be regarded as an especially significant
issue because he, along with Schmidt and co-founder Sergey Brin,
have majority control of the Internet company through special
voting shares.
Wall Street analysts mostly took the news of Page’s extended
absence in stride, though some expressed concern about the lack
of information.
“It’s the number one thing I’m concerned about today just
because there’s so little data available,” said BGC Partners
analyst Colin Gillis.
JP Morgan analyst Doug Anmuth noted that Page has not posted
any messages to his Google+ profile since May 25.
“We have no specific reason to think there is anything more
to Larry’s condition, but we find it odd that the company would
already rule him out of the 2Q call, which is likely still a few
weeks away,” Anmuth wrote to clients late on Thursday.
“This could raise some questions among investors.”
Simon Best, a head and neck surgery specialist at the Johns
Hopkins Voice Center, said most cases where a doctor might order
a patient to rest their voice involved either a vocal chord
hemorrhage, or throat surgery of some sort.
“We actually very rarely put people on complete voice rest
where they are not cleared to talk or allowed to talk,” West
said. “There are probably some practice differences between
physicians and whoever is treating him, but there are only two
scenarios where we put people on voice rest: if they’ve had
vocal cord surgery, or if they’ve had a vocal chord hemorrhage.”
Best, who has not treated Page, said hemorrhages were easily
treatable, but a wide variety of conditions might necessitate
surgery.
The Wall Street Journal first reported on the details of
Page’s internal memo on Friday.
During the shareholder meeting on Thursday, Google’s Schmidt
tried to lighten the situation by relaying comments that
co-founder Brin had made about Page’s condition: Sergey “has
said that this problem will make Larry a better CEO because he’s
going to have to choose his words very carefully.”
