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I'm not sure why Ben used a false name for the CFO. One quick search got me her real name, and more details about her eventual indictment.
This might be a naive viewpoint, but I don't see how this could be viewed as legal. If I as a retail investor in equity or equity options in a company was approached by my broker and asked what day in the past I would like to use for my cost basis calculation, that would sound pretty fishy. Why should it be different for inside holders?
First, when we started the company, Marc and I agreed that the company’s General Counsel would always report directly to me. This is different than in many technology companies where the General Counsel reports to the Chief Financial Officer. This needs to be in bold 72-point font. Corporate behaviour aligns with corporate structure, and if the General Counsel is subordinate to the Chief Financial Officer, complying…
Shouldn't "do the right thing" be sufficient rather than overburdening the company with legal matters unrelated to the core business?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The premise that the author would've landed in jail for implementing the backdating scheme is flawed. His CFO went to jail, but because in the process of choosing favorable dates for backdating her stock options, she ended up deliberately misstating her income for certain years on her tax returns. By and large, people do not go to jail for simply picking the wrong plausible interpretation of tax or accounting law. Th…
I'm not sure why it matters that much which day options were granted on that it is worth putting people in jail for. The company has right to compensate their workers any way they like. Including giving options for free or for any price they see fit, and doing that any day at any time. Of course, our tax code being as weird and byzantine as it is, that may mean that some ways of giving options may end up in people pa…
First, when we started the company, Marc and I agreed that the company’s General Counsel would always report directly to me. This is different than in many technology companies where the General Counsel reports to the Chief Financial Officer. This needs to be in bold 72-point font. Corporate behaviour aligns with corporate structure, and if the General Counsel is subordinate to the Chief Financial Officer, complying…
Shouldn't "do the right thing" be sufficient rather than overburdening the company with legal matters unrelated to the core business?
The larger the group of people, the more the structure of that group rather than the moral makeup of its members determines that group's behaviour.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
that rationale is that obeying the law is a financial decision rather than a moral decision. if the (money) price of breaking the law is less than the profit made by breaking the law, then the CFO will decide to do it. this is THE classic example of corporate sociopathy. unfortunately its still the way a lot of companies do business.
You're confusing law and morality. I think the correlation is mild.
Unrelated to the story, there is a dead comment on this thread. It looks like it was written by a racist bot? What? Why is somebody paying money to do this?
It's not a bot, but an individual. If you're interested in some back story: http://www.youtube.com/user/losethos http://www.templeos.org/
First, when we started the company, Marc and I agreed that the company’s General Counsel would always report directly to me. This is different than in many technology companies where the General Counsel reports to the Chief Financial Officer. This needs to be in bold 72-point font. Corporate behaviour aligns with corporate structure, and if the General Counsel is subordinate to the Chief Financial Officer, complying…
I bit OT, but I saw something similar once where the head of QA reported to the director of development. So the guy in charge of QA's annual raise/bonus/etc was himself compensated based on hitting release deadlines. I wonder how people here would have set that up differently.
really?