Remember a couple years ago when it seemed like every major technology company—and almost every major U.S. corporation—was fervently auditing its books looking for any financial irregularities that, under new federal legislation, could see their executives facing criminal charges and even jail time for mis-stated financial records? The investigations led to companies like Dell and Take-Two taking major financial hits as the result of having back-dated stock options: that is, making the effective date of a grant of stock options to an employee occur at a particularly advantageous point in the past, effectively increasing the value of the options grant. There’s nothing illegal about back-dating options so long as the practice is fully disclosed—if it’s not disclosed, it can mean bad things for company leaders—as former Take-Two CEO Ryan Brant found out when he plead guilty to falsification of business records to avoid prison time.
