Nickname: John

Review: Comparing the back-dating to speeding is ludicrous. A much more appropriate comparison is comparing it to cheating on your taxes. If the government comes to you years later with evidence you cheated, you're going down, plain and simple.

Date reviewed: Aug 28, 2006 5:55 AM

Nickname: Fraud Investigator

Review: The "everyone is doing it" is a classic rationalization for fraud. Auditors are supposed to review the "tone at the top," a.k.a., management's overall ethical state and respect for law, controls, and shareholders. When we have execs saying, "Oh, it's just a paperwork problem", "it didn't hurt investors," etc., that is a red flag in my mind. Warren Buffet says that he would not invest in 95% of companies on the market, due to poor management. Food for thought.

Date reviewed: Aug 18, 2006 2:10 AM

Nickname: Shr Nfr

Review: To Peter: Try backdating a check and you may out that backdating is fraud and you will be a felon. It is an effort to deceive, pure and simple. And for that, it's wrong.

Date reviewed: Aug 16, 2006 11:19 PM

Nickname: Cycloid

Review: The "everyone is doing it" does not hold water. They aren't all doing it. We agree to a rule of law for the common good. So if the speed limit is 65, do we go after the attentive driver matching traffic at 72? Of course not. If he went 75, he might be stopped on a bad day. But I think we all want the guy, boozed or drugged out of his gourd, that is wandering back and forth at 95. I would want him stopped before he sideswipes your sister or your kid or you. Don't you? An SEC scare about options abuse is probably a good thing overall. Burning four or five extreme examples at the stake is probably a good thing. There are many cases of companies that raise a bundle of cash from the public which are run by folks who fail to understand "fiduciary responsibility." They don't want to understand either--their egos overwhelm their responsibilty to the ordinary folks. My feeling is "burn 'em."

Date reviewed: Aug 16, 2006 5:03 PM

Nickname: Peter

Review: Why does backdating options hurt investors? If options are being used as a form of incentive, 10 shares backdated to cost $2 less should be equivalent to a $20 bonus promised in the future. And that future promise only has value if the company does well. It seems a new invention would have been devised if companies thought this was going to be a problem. "Backdating options" is an artifact of the history of options. Instead the rules could have been that option prices can be arbitrarily chosen and not correspond to any date. In fact that is how the price of all publicly traded options is done. So what is the problem?

Date reviewed: Aug 16, 2006 10:54 AM

Nickname: Dingle

Review: The Bush administration is after high-tech. They went after Google, they are trying to pass all these surveillance laws that high-tech is resisting. High-tech is basically ignoring "emperor Bush." Now Silicon Valley is going after the oil monopolies with electric cars. This is a witch hunt. Consider how many people the government itself has killed in the last 3-4 years? This is part of the "fear" game they play, or the "Abu Ghraib" strategy, i.e., the reason Abu Ghraib exists is more to threaten people they will be sent there in order to get them to do what they want than for any other purpose. Some 80% of the Internet is against the Bush people and they always take a "top-down" view, i.e., get the people at the top on their side by friendship or by force. When Bush is gone the "Witch Hunt" will end and we can all get back to doing useful things for the world.

Date reviewed: Aug 16, 2006 1:27 AM

Nickname: grunt

Review: As someone who was "legally cheated" out of my share of ownership in a startup that was later sold for $50 million using options shenanigans, I must strongly object to this guy's opinion. Fair play is in everyone's interest. Look at what happened to the Russian stock market after the Yukos debacle--all stocks fell.

Date reviewed: Aug 16, 2006 12:45 AM

Nickname: Adventure Trip

Review: This CEO still doesn't get it. It's not his company, it's the stockholders' company. His comment about his burned-out CFO was very revealing: "So I put him on the board." Note that stockholders elect board members, not CEOs. Crony-filled boards are a big part of the problem. BTW, I'm a general counsel who has seen first-hand how compensation committees and crony-filled boards work. IMHO, this options scandal will bring down lots of companies. So I'm shorting Google!

Date reviewed: Aug 15, 2006 10:15 PM

Nickname: Josh S.

Review: For all of you people who say that you have never broken the speed limit, you all must be angels. I am grateful for the candid comments of the network appliance guy. It's ironic to me that the government regulatory bodies are going after these guys like they are all "witches," but when it comes to real issues that hurt investors more than anything such as "naked shorting" they choose to look the other way and do nothing.

Date reviewed: Aug 15, 2006 10:05 PM

Nickname: BigPete

Review: BS and Warren should get together. Warren wants to shoot the executives and, like Saddam, probably thinks there's nothing wrong with that. Want to see the market impact on your portfolio when you start?

Date reviewed: Aug 15, 2006 9:54 PM