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Technology Stocks : Cisco Systems, Inc. (CSCO) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: rkral who wrote (65453)	5/13/2004 11:23:16 AM
From: Kirk ©	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 77400

OT: My reply still holds. There are wonderful alternatives to stock options that companies can use. When I was at HP prior to leaving in 1998, we had a deal where we got a matching share of stock for every two shares we bought and held for 2 years. I'm not exactly sure how they accounted for it, but I believe those "mathcing shares" could have been expensed as they were issued at the fair market value and nobody would object. The volatility mulpiple was paid by us employees in that we had to hold the shares for 2 years to get our match. It was fair as participation was limited to 10% of salary. Options were only given to engineers who did something great and even then it was only for a few hundred shares, if that. What pissed me off when I left and became more aware of the issues was how much money my "great optionable ideas, processes or patents" generated for the company while I got a measley 100 or 200 - 10 yr options for each while the CEO and other insiders were getting thousands and thousands of options just for doing the job they were paid to do. It was a dual pay structure! I think this option discussion is good as I believe the practice will eventually change and the money used to keep dilution small will go to shareholders as cash dividends or true share repurchases which will raise EPS, not just keep it flat for dilution. Kirk