[HN Gopher] Former Apple exec who enforced insider trading rules... ___________________________________________________________________ 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. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-06-30 23:00 UTC)