Come on it is ridiculous to prosecute these "little people" like that Lisa Berry woman. the people that need to go to jail are gates and jobs, anybody can see that. Either Gates and Jobs go down or drop the whole thing.
You're not just in favor of prosecuting some pee-on are you when its obvious the generals are directing this? what I find offensive is all the "law and order" types who are shouting Zero Tolerance until you bring up Gates and Jobs. Then they slither away.
The dollar amts at msft, csco and apple are way more than these small players. Maybe we can lock them all up in one jail like a giant corporate club fed- Jobs, Gates, Chambers, Dell etc. everybody. Of course who would run the companies?
Microsoft's Past Options Practices Skirted Accounting Rule, Experts Say
Microsoft Corp. told investors in Securities and Exchange Commission filings in the late 1990s that it was complying with a specific accounting rule regarding stock-options grants.
But for much of that decade the software giant retroactively set the grant date
online.wsj.com
Apple
The Executive Team grant, which was nominally dated January 17, 2001, worked like this, according to the SEC complaint. On January 30 Heinen emailed CEO Jobs and CFO Anderson spreadsheets laying out Apple’s stock prices for every day in the month of January, and recommending possible dates on which to retroactively date the grant. In her email to Jobs she wrote, “To avoid any perception that the Board was acting in appropriately [sic] for insiders prior to Macworld announcements, I suggest we use Jan. 10, the day after your Macworld keynote, at $16.563. That was one of the lowest closes of the month, after the $14.875 price on Jan 2. I don’t think the [Executive Team] would object to the $1.688 difference to avoid claims of inappropriate conduct.”
The conversation Anderson says he had with Jobs — in which he explained the accounting ramifications of choosing any date prior to when the board had actually given its approval — would have had to occur early in the process of awarding the grant, at a time when Jobs was planning to use the Jan. 2 date for the grant (the date Heinen thought would look too much like springloading). Anderson’s attorney says that Anderson “was told by Mr. Jobs that the Board had given its prior approval and the Board would verify it.” When asked about this account by the Wall Street Journal yesterday, Jobs referred the question to an Apple spokesperson, who declined comment.
legalpad.blogs.fortune.com |
