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To: hueyone who wrote (52513)	8/20/2002 3:31:32 PM
From: Jurgis Bekepuris	Respond to of 54805

>Or maybe young companies can pay their rent, insurance >and suppliers with stock options and report 100% margins. Funny you asked: they did! During the bubble there were "incubators" and landlords that provided all these things to companies for company shares or stock options... Jurgis - not any longer?com

To: hueyone who wrote (52513)	8/20/2002 10:45:15 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

Gates: Expensing Options Won't Hurt Techs Tue Aug 20, 6:44 PM ET By Jeffrey Hodgson TORONTO (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates said on Tuesday there would be little impact on technological innovation if hi-tech firms began accounting for employee stock options as an expense. But Gates, co-founder of the world's largest software maker and one of the world's richest men, reiterated Microsoft's stance that it has no plans to join the growing ranks of companies that have begun expensing options in a bid to improve investor confidence. "I don't think a change in the way the accounts are done would have some major impact on technology. The numbers are there in every quarterly report. There's full disclosure. So it's hard to think: would that make some dramatic change in behavior?" Gates told a news conference in Toronto. "We'll have to see if that comes to pass. But I'm not predicting some dramatic effect one way or another." Scrutiny over corporate treatment of stock options has intensified after accounting scandals at Enron Corp. and WorldCom Inc. . In the past two months, General Electric Co. , Amazon.com Inc. and Coca-Cola Co. have agreed to expense options in a bid to regain investor confidence. But the technology sector, which has traditionally doled out stock options to attract talent, has resisted the trend. Some industry watchers have said small tech companies in particular could see their bottom lines pushed deep into the red by the policy. In its latest earnings statement, Microsoft said fourth quarter net income would have been $903 million instead of $1.53 billion if it had to expense stock options. Microsoft said last month it would stick with the tech sector's practice of not listing employee options. "There is no change in the accounting standards related to stock options," Gates said on Tuesday. "Obviously our industry should move in a consistent way, because otherwise you're not going to get any comparability between results. So we'll see what the industry chooses to do or what the requirements are." Gates was in Toronto for a Microsoft-sponsored conference on innovation after spending three days in Montreal playing in the World Bridge Championships. He told a conference audience the collapse of the dot-com bubble had a positive side effect for his company. "I'd say we're in the most positive hiring environment that we have ever been in. I mean it's wild. We get so many good people now," he said in an on-stage interview. "As the dot-com era came, people said 'if I haven't made $10 million in my first few months, I'm going to a new company'." Microsoft announced in July it plans to add 5,000 employees to its workforce of 50,500 for the current fiscal year that ends in June 2003.