June 22 (Bloomberg) -- Apple Inc. should disclose whether Steve Jobs had a liver transplant if he returns to work this month in the role of chief executive officer, corporate governance experts said.

Jobs, a cancer survivor, went on medical leave in January after saying he wanted to take himself out of the limelight and focus on his health. He had a liver transplant about two months ago, according to a person familiar with the matter.

While Apple’s directors don’t need to give updates on Jobs’s health while he is on leave, that could change if he comes back as CEO, said Charles Elson, director of the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware.

“In the interests of transparency, I think it would be necessary for them to disclose something as serious as a liver transplant,” Elson said. “Investors want to know if he’s healthy and if he can continue to run the company.”

Apple’s board sought legal advice on how the company should deal with disclosures about Jobs’s health, according to people familiar with the matter. While Apple and its board may not have been obligated to give more details on Jobs’s health, some corporate governance experts say both could have been more transparent.

Nutritional Ailment

Jobs, 54, said on Jan. 5 he would remain CEO at Cupertino, California-based Apple while seeking a “relatively simple and straightforward” treatment for a nutritional ailment. Nine days later, he announced his leave through the end of June and handed over day-to-day management to Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook.

“Steve continues to look forward to returning to Apple at the end of June and there is nothing further to say,” said Steve Dowling, an Apple spokesman. He declined to comment on disclosures about Jobs’s health. Jobs didn’t return an e-mail seeking comment.

Apple’s CEO made his first public comment today since going on leave, saying in a company statement the “iPhone is winning” after Apple sold more than 1 million iPhone 3G S mobile phones in its debut weekend. The faster phone went on sale June 19.

Jobs presided over every major Apple product launch since July 1997, until he went on leave this year. While the U.S. has strict medical privacy laws, Jobs’s CEO role and investors’ view that he is Apple’s chief product visionary may trump his right to privacy, said Nell Minow, co-founder of The Corporate Library, a research firm in Portland, Maine, that tracks corporate governance issues.

Medical Privacy

“The CEO of a public company cannot have the luxury of privacy about significant medical matters, especially when he is a central part of the company’s brand and a core asset,” Minow said in an e-mail. “A board of directors has to insist on and provide frankness to the company’s constituents -- including its shareholders -- about the CEO’s health and its impact on his availability to the company.”

Jobs was considering a liver transplant as a result of complications following his 2004 surgery to remove an islet cell neuroendocrine tumor, Bloomberg News reported in January, citing people who were monitoring his illness.

Even though Apple directors could have provided more information on Jobs’s health, their handling of the situation may be acceptable, especially since the company has continued to function well in his absence, said John Dienhart, who holds the Frank Shrontz Chair for Professional Ethics at Seattle University.

Apple fell $2.11 to $137.37 at 4 p.m. New York time in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. Since Jobs went on medical leave, the shares have climbed 61 percent.

‘Getting It Right’

The board may “be getting it right because the company is in good shape, they’re not giving messages that he’s peachy keen or coming back full time,” Dienhart said. “If people were worried about Apple’s team and they weren’t meeting expectations or the products weren’t as good as they were promoted to be, then Jobs’s health becomes more important from an investor point of view.”

Companies don’t necessarily need to give details on the health of executives under U.S. law, said Michael Guttentag, associate professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles and former investment banker at Morgan Stanley.

“There’s nothing technically required of CEOs as far as disclosures about their health,” Guttentag said. “Silence is acceptable.”

Apple’s Board

Apple’s board has rarely commented on Jobs’s health. In January, the same day Jobs said he had found the cause of his weight loss in 2008, Apple’s directors issued a separate statement praising Jobs’s leadership.

“If there ever comes a day when Steve wants to retire or for other reasons cannot continue to fulfill his duties as Apple’s CEO, you will know it,” they wrote on Jan. 5.

In February, Genentech Inc. Chairman Art Levinson, who serves as co-lead director along with Intuit Inc. Chairman Bill Campbell, told shareholders at Apple’s annual meeting that Jobs remained “deeply involved” in major strategic decisions. “At this point, we feel we’ve met all disclosure obligations and responsibilities,” Levinson said.

Levinson and Campbell didn’t respond to requests for comment. Apple’s other directors, including former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, Google Inc. CEO Eric Schmidt, J. Crew Group Inc. CEO Millard “Mickey” Drexler, Avon Products Inc. CEO Andrea Jung and former International Business Machines Corp. finance chief Jerome York, couldn’t be reached, declined to comment or didn’t respond to requests for comment.

‘Unrivaled Genius’

Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, senior associate dean at Yale University’s School of Management, said Apple’s board needs to say more on Jobs’s health. Part of the problem, he said, is that directors are too deferential to Jobs, who has led a turnaround at the company since he returned in 1997. Jobs co-founded Apple in 1976.

“The board continues to be enraptured with his admitted unrivaled genius, creativity, and will,” Sonnenfeld said. “They are not required to give us hourly updates on Jobs’s treatment now that he is admittedly out of service on leave, but they must name a CEO -- at least an interim CEO as he has clearly been incapacitated and unable to serve this spring.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Connie Guglielmo in San Francisco at cguglielmo1@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: June 22, 2009 16:12 EDT