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Apple takes $84 million charge, defends Steve Jobs in options scandal
While Apple's surely enjoying the perks of having a monumental amount of iPods unwrapped just days ago, everything's not exactly kosher in Cupertino. Aside from the mysterious mouse the firm just patented, the company is facing another bevy of off-the-wall lawsuits, all while trying to fish its CEO out of potentially hot water. After the Securities and Exchange Commission found that ole Steve was granted 7.5 million stock options without the proper authorization of Apple's board of directors in 2001, there was widespread speculation that Mr. One More Thing may suffer the same fate as Apple's former CFO Fred Anderson, who resigned after a similar debacle in 2004. It seems, however, that things just might work out okay after all, as Apple finally filed its required forms with SEC, recognizing a "total additional non-cash, stock-based compensation expense of $84 million after tax, including $4 million and $7 million in fiscal years 2006 and 2005, respectively." Aside from taking the lofty charge, the company also stated that while Jobs was "aware of the favorable grant date recommendations, he did not financially benefit from these grants or appreciate the accounting implications." So all those out there holding your breath to see if Macworld would ever be the same if this went south, it looks like we'll be seeing jeans and a black shirt all over again in just a few weeks.
Financial Times: Forged Documents related to Jobs' options
Sources have informed The Financial Times of London that the forged documents at the center of the ongoing SEC investigation relate to illegal activities surrounding options given to Steven Jobs. According to the FT story, Jobs "was handed 7.5m stock options in 2001 without the required authorization from the company's board of directors." and that "Records that purported to show a full board meeting had taken place to approve Mr Jobs' remuneration, as required by Apple's procedures, were later falsified."If this is in fact the case, it certainly makes sense that Jobs would seek his own external legal counsel both to more closely protect his personal interests as well as put some distance between himself and the company as a whole. Update: The FT article makes no mention of wrong doing by Jobs himself, and as such this post has been updated.[via Cult of Mac]
HP chairwoman Patricia Dunn resigns, effective immediately
We've just received word that HP chairwoman Patricia Dunn has resigned, effective immediately, in the wake of the corporate spying scandal that has plagued the company for weeks -- keep in mind that this is the same woman who previously said she would not step down until 2007. Earlier this month, it was revealed that while undergoing a leak investigation, HP had hired private investigators who accessed private phone records of company boardmembers and nine journalists without their permission. The investigators are said to have used pretexting -- the sleazy (not to mention illegal) act of impersonating someone else to gain access to their confidential records -- in order to acquire this information. The now-departed chairwoman, who took over from Carly Fiorina only 18 months ago, had authorized the leak investigation earlier this year to learn who among the company's board had revealed corporate information to CNET News in 2005. Dunn, other company higher-ups, and the private investigators will likely face criminal charges; Bill Lockyer, California's attorney general, said earlier this week on "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" that "We currently have sufficient evidence to indict people both within Hewlett-Packard, as well as contractors on the outside." Dunn, who also recently won the Bay Area Council's Hall of Fame Leadership award (she really did), isn't quite out of the woods just yet -- she will almost certainly get completely throttled when she has to answer questions before a Congressional committee next week.
Eidos cools coffee, de-nipples Tomb Raider
The left half of the above pic is a nipple-licious stripper skin from the European PC version of Tomb Raider: Legend that Xboxic (post not entirely safe from work) speculates might be responsible for possibly delaying the April 11 U.S. release of the game. The right half is the same skin after applying an areola-erasing patch. Eidos denies that the U.S game has been delayed, but our fellow bloggers have provided pretty solid proof that Legend was indeed smuggling raisins overseas. Is Eidos performing a last minute emergency nipplectomy on the U.S. PC and 360 versions to spare American kids the horror of seeing something they used to suck on everyday—narrowly avoiding the next Hot Coffee scandal? Will Senator Cankles and her Fundie bedfellows be able to sleep at night knowing they missed an opportunity to further demagogue games as pixelated pornography? Only Lara knows for sure, and she's keeping her shirt on.(I swear this is the last breast-related post for a while.)
