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Technology Stocks : Siebel Systems (SEBL) - strong buy? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (6694)	5/18/2003 10:16:00 PM
From: Mike Buckley	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6974

muckracker, Thanks for explaining. I agree with you. Lizzie, while I don't think Sebl should exclude these sorts of questions, I can see why they would want to. I can see why also but I don't like what I see. Siebel's desire to exclude certain questions because there is no new and constructive outcome of asking or answering the question would be reasonable if it also applies to information that results in favorable portrayal of the company. The problem is that it only applies to info that puts the company in a bad light. Siebel management bends over backwards every quarter at least for the last five years to portray the company in the best possible way. Except for very rare moments, management avoids anything that might portray the company's performance in an unfavorable way. And when it does happen, Tom Siebel almost always has someone other than himself lined up to take the blame, as in the example of his VP of sales that went to SAP. Tom conveniently forgot to mention that if that VP did such a terrible job, apparently Tom also must have done a terrible job of recruiting and hiring him. --Mike Buckley

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (6694)	5/19/2003 2:12:54 AM
From: hueyone	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6974

Unfortunately in shareholder meetings, you can't ask anyone that raises their hand just how much of a stake they have in the company, and exclude the little fish or hecklers which own no stock and are just there to hear themselves speak. Your contention that stock option expensing is an issue for just a few disgruntled, small fry investors just isn't true. I suppose you thought the same thing about Apple shareholders----right before a majority of shares were voted in favor of expensing stock options at the annual shareholder meeting. Here are some more "small fry" groups who have submitted letters to the FASB in favor of expensing stock options on the income statements: Gregory M. Smith, Director – Operations/Compliance & Fund Accounting, Investment Company Institute---a national association including 8,938 mutual funds, 535 closed-end investment companies and 6 sponsors of unit investment trusts; its mutual funds members have assets of about $6.539 trillion, accounting for approximately 95% of total industry assets, and 90.2 million individual shareholders, 1/31/03 letter to the FASB: The Institute urges the Board to move forward with a reconsideration of Statement No. 123 as soon as practicable. We continue to believe that accounting standards should (1) require the issuers to treat the fair value of stock options granted to employees to be recognized as expense in the income statement and (2) ensure uniformity in how stock options are valued for this purpose. Sarah A. B. Teslik, Executive Director, Council of Institutional Investors---an association of more than 130 corporate, public and union pension funds with more than $3 trillion in pension assets, 1/21/03 Letter to the FASB: The Council supports the principles outlined in the IASB’s exposure draft, and we urge the Financial Accounting Standards Board to propose and approve similar rules. The IASB proposal is in line with the Council policy on the issue, which states that since stock options granted to employees, directors and non-employees are compensation and have a cost, companies should include these costs as an expense on their reported income statements and disclose their valuation assumptions. From FASB Chairman Herz's Statement to a Business Roundtable/Senate meeting on 5/8/03: Most commentators that were users of financial statements, including individual investors, pension funds, mutual funds, creditors, and financial analysts, were generally supportive of mandatory expense recognition of all stock-basedcompensation. fasb.org Regards, Huey

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (6694)	5/19/2003 2:30:35 AM
From: hueyone	Respond to of 6974

And according to Greenspan, Arthur Levitt, Paul Volker and many other bright economic leaders, expensing stock options is an issue of national concern. Failure to expense stock options, along with the associated inflated earnings, may be negatively impacting the efficient allocation of capital within our economy. Snip from Greenspan: As I noted at the outset, some view the current treatment of option grants as having been a major aid in raising capital to finance the rapid exploitation of advanced technologies. While the vital contribution of new technology to the growth of our economy is evident to all, not all new ideas create value on net. Not all new ideas should be financed. In recent years, substantial capital arguably was wasted on a number of enterprises whose prospects appeared more promising than they turned out to be. This waste is an inevitable byproduct of the risk-taking that generates the growth in our economy. However, the amount of waste becomes unnecessarily large when the earnings reports that help investors allocate investment are inaccurate. Entire text of Greenspan's remarks on expensing stock options at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta in May, 2002: federalreserve.gov Regards, Huey