More than 135 U.S. companies have disclosed internal inquiries or government investigations related to backdating of stock options.
That means instead of using the share price and date when the options were actally issued, they picked an earlier date with a lower stock price, so their gain would be greater.
At least 39 executives and board directors at 19 companies have been fired or resigned. Top executives who have recently resigned over options investigations include: UnitedHealth Group Inc. Chief Executive William McGuire, KLA-Tencor Corp. Chairman Kenneth Levy, CNET Networks Inc. Chief Executive Shelby Bonnie and McAfee Inc. CEO George Samenuk. McGuire quit as chairman earlier this month and will resign as CEO by Dec. 1. And the most recent casualty is former chief executive of Monster Worldwide Inc., Andrew McKelvey.
As always, it is easier to make money cheating, than the honorable way.
The only surprise is that this time they got caught.
2 comments:
The real answer for the spread of corruption at this rate, is in the feature next:
Most men but especially those bad and ugly CEO's and their followers, would prefer the "trick" lady for the "treat" rather than the "treat" lady for the same purpose. The "trick" or the dark side is always more attractive than the oposite, right side, at least for the protogonists of the misconduct.
How does this play out in Big pharma in their daily conduct of business and beyond?
Both the "trick" - illegal and the "treat" - legal activity is allowed and approved by and from the very top of every Big pharma Co. To quote the well known song: "In Jersey everything is legal as long as you don't get cought".(BD)
The misconduct ( illegal, unethical, immoral, etc activity) is not done by some kind of "rough" elements, out of control, but by the very core of management in charge. This is why it is so effective and almost un-provable.
What about Canada, where you can see a good source for drug reimoprtation. All the players are the same, the prices are better, perhaps 50% discount and the safety issue is non-existant, as long one buys from Pfizer Canada for instance. There were few cases of copycat drugs, Norvasc and Viagra in fact, but these were illegally imported from Orient and sold locally till cought by our very effecient law enforcement. As they say they always "get their man".
Having the same Big pharma players, we had hardly any whistleblowing that would come close to cases Peter exposes so well and the enormous fines levied against the offenders. It is hard to believe that they are not doing business the same way north of the border.
Question: Does anyone out there watching this blog, for whatever reason knows if Canadian laws allow for the same "returns" for successful whistleblowing as in the USA? Yes it is not an easy job to get that 10-20% for obvious reasons, but one should try for both the possibility of the "returns" and for public good. If you know, please tell us.
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