NYT Reports Steve Jobs' Exoneration

heyitsgogi writes "The New York Times is reporting that Apple has cleared Steve Jobs of any wrongdoing. From the article: 'In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Apple said that while its investigation revealed that the company's stock option procedures did not include sufficient safeguards to prevent manipulation, Mr. Jobs did not benefit financially from any questionable stock awards.' As a result of the internal investigation, Apple said it would record $84 million in expenses related to the options awards."

Astroturf Much?

[Cadallin]

Falling stock? WTF? The only places I've seen people making a big deal out of this are posts by users on Tech sites. Meanwhile Apple stock is up nearly $4.00 today alone, and is riding at 10+ year high of over $84/share. Methinks there's some pretty heavy astroturfing going on about this. Because the facts seem to indicate that the shareholders and market in general don't give a flying fuck about this "huge" scandal. They're too busy watching Apple's continually rising sales and high profit margins to care about something as piss-insignificant as a $100 million in stock irregularities.

I mean, god damn people, this isn't ENRON or WorldCOM. Apple sure as hell isn't collapsing like a house of cards. The facts remain: Apple is making shit tonnes of money. Worst Case Scenario out of this event: Apple gets a bit of bad press nobody cares about, they pay a fairly minor fine (compared to their Billions in Cash and liquid assets) of a few hundred million plus maybe some back taxes, and maybe, MAYBE a CFO and some other financial staff get forced into early retirement. That's it. You think the board of directors (let alone the Shareholders(!)) are going to cashier Steve "Reality Distortion Field" Jobs over 10 or so million? HA! Get a fucking life!

Re:Give it back!

[Anonymous Coward]

He already did.

Re:Apple with no Jobs?

[wass]

You wrote:
The internet is buzzing withspeculation that Steve Jobs may step down over reports that he profited $7.5 million in stock options by falsifying an executive board meeting. The financial times has a good overview of the unfolding story.

Yet quoting from the Financial Times article you linked to

Mr Jobs later surrendered his options before they were exercised, implying that he did not gain any direct benefit from them. He was later given a grant of restricted stock by the company instead.

So where is all this internet buzz describing how Jobs 'profited' from $7.5 million in stock options that he surrendered without exercising? You might want to RTFA [nytimes.com] which has many more specifics than your links.

You further claim that Apple 'cleared him' due to speculation, rumors, and falling stock. But please explain how Apple can formally and legally exonerate Jobs without demonstrating exhaustive proof within SEC accounting rules that Jobs wasn't involved. Ie, they handed all results of their internal inquiry directly to the SEC, and if they falsified anything in there they'd be in far more trouble than they are now. And their internal investigation was quite exhaustive, with over 26,000 man hours [streetinsider.com] devoted to this issue.

Also, you'll notice in that NYT article that the focus of the blame seems to lie on two executives (Fred Anderson and Nancy Heinen) that have both subsequently quit Apple since this backdating scam and also have their own independent lawyers ready. And FWIW, I can't find the story now, but an analyst at Piper Jaffray claimed a less than 5% chance Jobs was illegally involved but that as CEO it's standard practice to retain one's own legal counsel for such a situation.

philanthropy

[falconwolf]

The sad part is so many people put him above reproach and the good guy in contrast to Gates in the great computer wars. Yet in comparing personal lives, Gates gives away more money than Jobs makes, and Jobs is not poor, yet he does very little as a philanthropist short of giving Apple computer discounts to schools to get more market share.

I guess you haven't heard how Jobs has worked with Bono and is working on AIDS amoung other things. Yea you could talk about how Gates gives away more than Jobs makes but then again Gates makes a lot more than Jobs. And how can you give away more than you make? Only by getting others to donate like how Buffet gave most of his fortune, about US$31 billion, to the Gate Foundation.

Falcon