Apple Shareholder Lawsuit Dismissed

explosivejared wrote with a ZDNet article about Apple's win in the shareholder stock-options backdating lawsuit. This jives with Apple's own internal investigation of the matter. "The New York City Employees Retirement System had sued Apple claiming that the company's practice of backdating stock options diluted the value of the stock. Apple has admitted that it improperly backdated stock options on several occasions, including two awards to CEO Steve Jobs, and last December it took a $84 million charge to account for the options. But the suit had to show that Apple shareholders lost money in order to recover damages ..."

Re:So basically...

[morgan_greywolf]

Minor nitpick: Apple didn't pay a fine they 'took a charge', which is an accounting adjustment. It still hurt them on paper to the tune of $84 million, but it's not exactly the same thing.

But, yeah...that's pretty much correct otherwise. In order to sue for damages, you actually have to, you know, show and prove actual damages. Duh. What kind of lawyer did these idiots hire anyway?

They meant "Jibes"

[Shag]

(The definition about being in accord or agreeing.)

It's an easy typo... but a lot of people just don't realize those are two very different words.

Re:So basically...

[gnasher719]

Minor nitpick: Apple didn't pay a fine they 'took a charge', which is an accounting adjustment. It still hurt them on paper to the tune of $84 million, but it's not exactly the same thing.

Another nitpick: Share_holders_ were not actually damaged at all. Share options were given out, but not accounted for in the correct way. That means that paper profits were too high. This was later adjusted down by $84 million. However, the actual profit was not changed at all, just the reported profit.

You were only affected if you bought Apple after the backdating happened, assuming that Apple was worth more than it actually was, and sold after the adjustment, when everyone knew the true value. Or if you bought before the backdating, and sold afterwards, so you got more money for your shares than you should have.

If you bought before the backdating happened and kept your shares, then you wrongly believed for a few years that your shares were worth more than they actually were, but that is not damaging.