Brian, from the article:
But my favorite is Barrett's disclosure that Intel grants more than 95% of its options to the rank and file, not to executives, and that its top five employees get less than 2% of all options. Jack Adamo, editor of Jack Adamo's Insiders Plus, noted that this is a "clever but shop-worn device" to claim the democratic nature of options grants. "It sounds goods until you do the math. That shows that 71,730 of Intel's employees get an average of 14 of every 1,000,000 stock options issued, whereas the top 5 executives get an average of 4,000 each. That ratio is 293 to 1."
If that's Bill Mann's "favorite" line, then he must be fond of invoking comparisons between the haves and the "have-nots." Personally, I could care less about the ratio between how many options Barrett gets and how many options I get. If Barrett were to give up his 1.35 million options he got in 2003 and disburse them to the employees instead, that would only amount to 19 extra options per employee.
Barrett's point is still valid, that the vast, vast majority of options Intel grants goes to the rank-n-file employees. Of course, this point is irrelevant if you emphasize the other points Bill Mann brought up, such as "no one at FASB has said 'don't use options.'" or that "Intel's compensation policies are not at issue here." But I guess Bill Mann would rather play the class warfare card than stick to his otherwise valid points, especially as he leads his article with Barrett's oh-so-evil doubling of his options from 2002 to 2003.
Tenchusatsu |
