[HN Gopher] Former Apple exec who enforced insider trading rules...
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Former Apple exec who enforced insider trading rules admits to
insider trading
Author : danso
Score : 77 points
Date : 2022-06-30 21:51 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (9to5mac.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (9to5mac.com)
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| How did he think he was going to get away with it?
| bobthechef wrote:
| mistrial9 wrote:
| .. because his secrecy, his self-control and his control of
| others in the room was "perfect" .. This obvious hypocritical
| ego bully jerk BS that can be seen from a mile away and the
| other finance people WANT IT. just my guess
| throwaway5959 wrote:
| Doctors smoke cigarettes. News at 11.
| tpmx wrote:
| This is peanuts.
|
| 2008:
|
| How Jobs dodged the stock option backdating bullet
|
| https://www.cnet.com/culture/how-jobs-dodged-the-stock-optio...
|
| tl;dr:
|
| > In the case of Apple, not only did the board send two
| sacrificial lambs to slaughter, but the feds hung some pretty
| hefty charges on their necks to boot. The lambs in question are
| former Sr. VP, General Counsel, and Secretary Nancy Heinen
| [settled with the SEC for $2.2 million], and former CFO and
| director Fred D. Anderson [settled with the SEC for $3.5
| million].
|
| > The SEC's complaint focuses on the backdating of two large
| option grants, one of 4.8 million shares for Apple's executive
| team and the other of 7.5 million shares for Steve Jobs.
|
| ...
|
| > At the end of the day, Jobs dodged a bullet because of 1) his
| value to Apple's shareholders, 2) his value to the U.S. economy,
| and 3) just plain luck that neither Apple's board nor the SEC
| found a smoking gun to force them to do something they didn't
| want to do.
| herodotus wrote:
| I will not claim to know the details of this particular story.
| But I do want to point out that, when I joined Apple, stock
| options were part of their bonuses. We were told whether or not
| we would get stock options, and when, during our annual one-one
| meetings with our managers. These meetings were held across the
| company over a period of a few weeks. We were told that the
| price of the option would be the minimum price over some period
| of days up to the time the board approved the employee options
| for everyone who was given them. So if employee a was told
| their award at the beginning of the month, and employee b told
| three weeks later, they would be given the option at the same
| price. This applied in my case, and seemed completely fair to
| me. I was a lowly engineer with no special value to the US
| economy, the shareholders etc. It was a sensible and rational
| way to award stock options. Apple switched to a new scheme,
| probably to avoid the appearance of something untoward, namely
| RSU: actual stock awards rather than options, but with
| restrictions on when we got them.
|
| Backdated stock options is just not comparable to insider
| trading.
| tpmx wrote:
| In the above case of stock option backdating:
|
| https://www.cultofmac.com/443542/steve-jobs-apple-stock-
| back...
|
| > According to Forbes, which broke the Apple stock-backdating
| story, Jobs' award of 7.5 million shares got approved at a
| board meeting on August 29, 2001. At that point, Apple's
| share price was $17.83. However, Jobs continued to argue over
| the point at which the options would vest. That resulted in
| Apple missing the deadlines for filing the proper information
| with the Securities and Exchange Commission and its auditors.
|
| > It took until December for the parties to agree upon terms.
| At that point, Apple's stock price stood at $21.01.
| Backdating gave Jobs a lower share price that, on paper, made
| him $20 million richer.
|
| Morally speaking I find this comparable to insider trading.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| Steve Jobs lived his life to break rules in front of others
| for a show of animal dominance. A guy who parked his 12
| cylinder ultra-luxury sedan in the Handicapped parking spot
| repeatedly, daily. Its not just "FU handicapped", its FU
| handicapped and if you say anything to me, now or later,
| you are fired. He was famous for firing a nervous nerd
| during an elevator ride who couldn't justify his job on the
| spot. The stories are endless. There was no one like Steve
| Jobs and that is true.
| anewpersonality wrote:
| Folks at public companies are getting away with far worse.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| like what?
| baby wrote:
| They all do insider trading at small scales, that's for sure.
| erehweb wrote:
| $600k over 5 years is a big amount of money, but probably fairly
| small compared to his TC as a senior director. Not a great
| risk/reward tradeoff
| scrose wrote:
| It's worth considering that this is likely not the whole story.
| If he was corrupt enough to do this himself, there's a non-
| negligible chance he had plenty of other family and/or friends
| who were also likely trading on privileged information and
| which he may have had some other beneficial deals with that
| haven't been found out
| paulpauper wrote:
| apple is famous for not paying that well. this is not google.
| metadat wrote:
| Uhm, no? This is false.
| gowld wrote:
| It was too easy.
|
| Imagine if every day you walked past a newsstand, and for some
| reason there is an envelope with $100K in cash there, every
| day, all the time. It's totally illegal to take it, but it's
| right there in front of you, and so easy to grab, and no one's
| going to notice...probably.
| cpncrunch wrote:
| >and no one's going to notice...probably.
|
| Except someone usually does eventually notice, and most
| people are smart enough to realise this.
| cptaj wrote:
| Thats what they pinned him for.
| rot13xor wrote:
| He probably didn't think he'd get caught or ego.
| walrus01 wrote:
| anyone want to make a guess at what this guy's gross W2 salary
| was?
| phphphphp wrote:
| Considering he started there in 2008 when the market cap of
| apple was <$100bn I'm going to guess it was low 6 figures and
| that the insider trading represented a meaningful amount of
| money to him.
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