Saturday, January 06, 2007
Al Gore, Apple Computer, and the backdating of options
Glenn Reynolds links to an interesting post about corporate governance -- specifically, Al Gore's governance of Apple Computer, which is under scrutiny for having backdated stock options and then not accounting for them properly.
There are many versions of options backdating, some of which are benign, some of which are obviously illegal, and some of which are a problem, but more the product of stupidity than venality. To the extent that the press and politicians have commented on the phenomenon, they almost always conflate these different versions, which is generally of a piece with the fetishistic yet ignorant coverage of corporate governance that has informed popular discussion of public company management in the last five or six years. In any case, I'm no expert on the Apple case, so I don't know whether Al Gore ought to be a defendant in a shareholder lawsuit or merely pilloried for insufficient attention to detail. Either way, I can't help but wonder whether the return of Democrats to some measure of power in Washington won't actually reduce the prosecutorial pressure on public companies. The Republicans, after all, can't be seen to coddle "Benedict Arnold CEOs," but Democrats who express concern for the competitivenes of American business would be pragmatically moving to the center.
1 Comments:
By 
, at
Mon Jan 08, 11:36:00 PM:
Aand wasnt it AL GORE who bragged he invented the internet? what he realy relivented was the big lie and he tell too many fish stories
