Apple admits to backdating options
28-Dec-2019 07:23
But before that time - before the company caught wind of the SEC's probe - "certain executives and employees selected numerous grant dates after the fact." Though backdating options - granting employees the right to purchase stock now based on yesterday's prices - is not illegal, the practice has become questionable, and may very well become illegal after a new Congress convenes next month.
In the meantime, improperly accounting for those options is illegal.
As a result, employees have already agreed that the exercise dates of the options they've already been granted will be "un-backdated," to coin a phrase.
Treacy received a total of million exercising his company stock options but about .5 million came from "the in-the-money portion of backdated option grants," prosecutors allege.
Apple and Dell received similar notices last week, responding by making further delays to their quarterly and annual reports, leaving investors with a fuzzier picture of the actual capital value of these companies as the weeks pass.
As Broadcom's statement admitted this morning, any options granted to any employee since May 2003 were determined to be valid.
An internal investigation concluded that Pixar backdated stock options before Walt Disney acquired the film studio, but "no one currently associated with the Company engaged in any intentional or deliberate acts of misconduct," according to a statement issued by Disney's chairman Friday. Jobs has been under scrutiny for his role in granting Apple stock options since he admitted last year that he was aware the company was backdating stock options given to executives and employees and that he helped pick favorable dates.
Law360 (June 29, 2006, AM EDT) -- Computer maker Apple Computer Inc.It may be time to put a cork in Silicon Valley's most famous law firm.