First: A stock can rise for reasons having zero to do with the reality of the business behind the stock, for example mispricing, availability or the lack thereof of alternative investments, inflation, currency devaluation etc. Second: To me it always leaves a very foul aftertaste when the achievements of a team are ascribed to whoever the visible front-person is. I find it hard to believe that among the other 149999…
Take him away then. Imagine he just vanished. Took a sabbatical, didn't say where he was going, and just disappeared for a year. What would happen? Things would function. They'd probably be fine for the first couple months, and they might even pass their first quarterly earnings without anyone noticing he's gone. If the department heads all were quiet and didn't notify the shareholders, things would seem completely f…
It's trivial for a CEO to issue a puff piece as a marketing tool. Steve Jobs tried to advertise himself next to Ghandi. Assigning credit is a difficult game. Studies show people over and under assign credit. The best/most realistic crediting of work to successful performance ratio ended up with the team crediting to one another something like 115% over how much work was actually done.
Debating over blame and credit is mostly a waste of time, even though people fundamentally need positive feedback for good work and negative feedback for bad work. It's mostly used politically in big corps and that's a big void I try to stay away from.