Jobs Helped Pick
'Favorable' Dates
For Option Grants
Apple Report Clears the CEO
Of Wrongdoing, Blames
Ex-Executives in Backdating
By NICK WINGFIELD, STEVE STECKLOW and CHARLES FORELLE
December 30, 2006; Page A1
Apple Computer Inc. acknowledged that it
backdated stock options and that Steve Jobs recommended "favorable"
dates for some options awards. But the company said he was absolved of
misconduct by a special internal investigation.
FOCUS ON JOBS
![[Steve Jobs]](HC-GG913_Jobs_20061005081644.gif) |
Steve Jobs |
Apple's filings this
morning reveal details of the company's options probe. Some
excerpts:
On options dating:
Although the
investigation found that CEO Steve Jobs was aware or recommended the
selection of some favorable grant dates, he did not receive or
financially benefit from these grants or appreciate the accounting
implications. The Special Committee also found that the
investigation had raised serious concerns regarding the actions of
two former officers in connection with the accounting, recording and
reporting of stock option grants.
Read more1.
On Jobs's October
2001 grant:
The approval for the
grant was improperly recorded as occurring at a special Board
meeting on October 19, 2001. Such a special Board meeting did not
occur. There was no evidence, however, that any current member of
management was aware of this irregularity.
Read more2.
Directors and others close to the Apple probe defended
Mr. Jobs, the company's iconic chief executive, even as it detailed his
part in a widespread pattern of options irregularities between 1997 and
2002. But Mr. Jobs and Apple, still under federal scrutiny as part of a
broad investigation of options backdating, are not yet out of the woods.
Some options and corporate-governance experts said
yesterday that they couldn't reconcile Apple's statements defending Mr.
Jobs with the facts the company disclosed, and called on the company to
seek recovery from him for a giant grant he received that the company
yesterday acknowledged was backdated.
Apple has previously said that two of its former
executives were responsible for improper options-granting practices,
without identifying the pair. Yesterday, people familiar with the matter
said the internal investigation had raised questions about Nancy Heinen,
Apple's former general counsel and board secretary, and Fred Anderson, a
former chief financial officer and board member. Attorneys for both
former Apple executives deny their clients did anything wrong.
An option gives its holder the right to buy a stock at
a fixed, or exercise price, usually for up to 10 years after the date of
the grant. By backdating the exercise price -- or pretending it was
granted on a date before the award was made -- the employee gets an
instant boost to the possible profits from the award. The practice can
violate securities laws and accounting rules. The U.S. attorney's office
in San Francisco and the Securities and Exchange Commission are
examining Apple's options practices.
The disclosure yesterday by Apple in filings with the
SEC said that 6,428 grants of options at Apple on 42 dates between 1997
and 2002 were improperly dated, resulting in charges to earnings for
those years. Apple restated its financial results between 1998 and 2006
to recognize a new after-tax, noncash expense of $84 million in
connection with the improperly dated options. (See
details of Apple's filings.7)
Since these charges -- essentially, previously
unreported compensation to employees -- generally are only mandated in
case of backdating, the restatement represents an acknowledgement that
grants were backdated on a large scale.
Since Apple first disclosed in June that it had
discovered irregularities with past option grants, the key question has
been whether the investigation would jeopardize the position of Mr.
Jobs, the co-founder of Apple who is widely credited with reviving the
company in the late 1990s and turning it once again into an arbiter of
popular technologies with products such as the iPod portable music
device. Investors interpreted Apple's latest disclosures and the board's
support for Mr. Jobs as a sign that his status at the company is secure,
sending its shares up 5% to $84.84.
Mr. Jobs could come under further scrutiny because of a
series of fortunately timed option grants when he was chairman at Pixar
Animation Studios that are also being probed by federal investigators.
As chairman during the time when favorably priced options were granted,
Mr. Jobs was also effectively in charge of administering options plans,
since the full board performed the functions of a compensation committee
year after year.
Pixar granted options to executives at the lowest
closing prices of 1997, 1998, 2000 and 2003 -- a highly improbable
pattern. Mr. Jobs wasn't among the executives who received options.
Walt Disney Co., which subsequently bought Pixar, said in November
that its board, on which Mr. Jobs sits, was conducting an independent
review of Pixar's option grants after inquiries from the SEC and
Department of Justice.
Former Vice President Al Gore and Jerome York, two of
the three Apple directors who oversaw the internal probe, said in a
statement that the board "is confident that the company has corrected
the problems" that led to the options irregularities and that "it has
complete confidence in Steve Jobs and the senior management team."
But David Yermack, a finance professor at New York
University who has studied options issues, said he was perplexed about
directors' expressions of confidence in Mr. Jobs. "They have pretty much
admitted that he was directly involved in a fraud," Mr. Yermack said,
pointing to Apple's statement that Mr. Jobs "recommended" the selection
of favorable grant dates. "If he had directly participated in altering
depreciation schedules, or booking revenue that wasn't yet earned, would
they have full confidence in him?"
In response, Apple spokesman Steve Dowling said:
"Following an exhaustive independent investigation, the special
committee found no misconduct by Steve Jobs or any other current
management. The board has expressed complete confidence in Steve and
senior management."
The Cupertino, Calif., company is one of the
highest-profile companies to be caught up in the probes over backdated
stock options. To date, at least 130 U.S. corporations are under
investigation for possible options backdating. Some have admitted to the
practice, and more than 60 executives and directors of public companies
have lost their jobs.
It remains unclear in which cases Mr. Jobs "recommended
the selection of some favorable grant dates," as Apple's filing states.
The company's internal probe, conducted by the law firm Quinn Emanuel
Urquhart Oliver & Hedges, didn't find evidence that Mr. Jobs recommended
backdating any of the options grants he received himself, according to
people familiar with the matter. "To the extent it occurred, it was
pretty limited," one person said. "These were episodic, limited,
isolated."
Among the most potentially serious discoveries of the
investigation, Apple said company records improperly showed that
approval of a grant of 7.5 million options to Mr. Jobs on Oct. 19, 2001,
occurred at a special meeting of its board of directors. The company's
investigation found that the meeting didn't actually occur.
In its filing, Apple said the grant was "originally
approved" at a board meeting on Aug. 29 at an exercise price of $17.83,
before stock splits. But it said the terms of the grant weren't
finalized until Dec. 18, a day when Apple's share closed at $21.01. The
grant was then dated back to Oct. 19 with an exercise price of $18.30.
Apple in its statement said it was taking a $20 million
charge, before taxes, related to this grant. But it echoed earlier
defenses of Mr. Jobs, saying that "he did not receive or financially
benefit from these grants or appreciate the accounting implications."
But Patrick McGurn, executive vice president of
Institutional Shareholder Services, which advises on corporate
governance, says that "clearly, there was a benefit from the options
that Jobs received...There was some fruit from those options, and it's
clear because there's a $20 million charge," says Mr. McGurn. In 2003,
Mr. Jobs returned the 2001 options grant and another granted to him in
2000 for five million shares of restricted Apple stock then worth over
$70 million. Mr. Jobs's restricted shares "generally vest in full" three
years after the grant date, according to Apple filings.
"I can't understand why they're [the board] not
recouping those shares," Mr. McGurn said, adding that the cloud hanging
over Apple isn't cleared by the filing because "there's a risk though
that some other body [of regulators or others] will reach a different
conclusion about this matter based on exactly the same set of facts."
According to a person familiar with the internal
investigation, Apple believes it has evidence that Ms. Heinen, as
corporate secretary, was aware of improper documentation that said a
board meeting occurred on Oct. 19. Cristina Arguedas, Ms. Heinen's
attorney, couldn't be reached for comment following the Apple filing,
but earlier this week said: "Nancy's reputation is rock-solid and
long-standing as a person of high integrity and honesty. Rumors and
innuendo to the contrary are without foundation."
As it had previously, Apple said yesterday that its
"investigation had raised serious concerns regarding the actions of two
former officers in connection with the accounting, recording and
reporting of stock option grants." An Apple spokesman yesterday declined
to confirm whether Mr. Anderson and Ms. Heinen are the two unnamed
former officers.
Apple may argue to federal investigators that as CFO,
Mr. Anderson should have been responsible for proper accounting of the
backdated options, according to a person familiar with the company's
thinking. Mr. Anderson was CFO at Apple between 1996 and 2004.
Jerome Roth, an attorney for Mr. Anderson, who is now a
partner at Silicon Valley private-equity firm Elevation Partners, said
his client was "disappointed to learn that during part of his tenure" as
CFO "the company apparently was not strictly complying with its
processes for granting stock options. As CFO, Fred did not play any
day-to-day role in the granting, reporting and accounting of stock
options and he was not involved in any knowing manipulation of the
process."
Federal prosecutors have already brought two criminal
cases in the stock-options backdating scandal. In one case, the former
CEO of Brocade Communications Systems Inc. was charged with fraud and
accused of altering the dates of option grants to hundreds of employees
and concealing millions of dollars in compensation expenses from
shareholders. The executive, Gregory Reyes, who didn't receive any of
the backdated grants himself, has denied any wrongdoing.
Apple believes the case against Mr. Reyes can't be
compared to Mr. Jobs's involvement in the backdated options at Apple,
according to a person familiar with the matter. "This is not the Reyes
model by a long stretch of the imagination," the person said. "The
government says Reyes systematically and routinely backdated options and
knew the implications."
In 2003, Mr. Jobs canceled the 2001 option, along with
a massive 2000 grant, and in exchange received five million shares of
restricted stock (the figure is before adjustment for splits). An Apple
spokesman wouldn't say how the company arrived at the five-million share
figure.
Warren Miller, an analyst at Beckmill Research of
Lexington, Va., which values options and other equity instruments,
calculates that the 2001 option was worth about $76 million when it was
exchanged in 2003, about $2 million higher than it would have been had
it not been backdated. All told, Mr. Miller figures the two options
together were worth about $200 million when they were swapped for
restricted stock that Apple valued at $74.8 million.
Mr. Miller says executives typically prefer to receive
restricted shares, and hence value them more, because there is less risk
involved than there is with an option.
Frederick W. Lambert, a law professor and an expert in
securities law at the University of California's Hastings law school in
San Francisco, says Mr. Jobs will likely escape any criminal or civil
charges stemming from this matter. "In proving a criminal case, it would
have to be beyond a reasonable doubt, and intent would play an element
in this." A lack of knowledge about accounting implications "would
constitute some kind of defense here," Mr. Lambert says.
Aitan Goelman, a lawyer at Zuckerman Spaeder LLP in
Washington, says prosecutors and regulators, flooded with backdating
cases, have to triage and pick the most promising ones to pursue. For
criminal fraud cases, he says, prosecutors need to establish that a
defendant intentionally defrauded or deceived someone; the SEC, bringing
civil charges, has a lower threshold. He says the apparently phony board
records at Apple might well draw federal officials' scrutiny to the
company or former executives.
-- Pui-Wing Tam contributed to this article.
Write to Nick Wingfield at
nick.wingfield@wsj.com8,
Steve Stecklow at
steve.stecklow@wsj.com9 and Charles Forelle at
charles.forelle@wsj.com10
|