Employee Stock Options

Ciena Corp. said its board repriced employee stock options to $12.38 a share, days after plans for Tellabs Inc. to acquire the firm were called off because of the company's woes. Shares in Linthicum, Md.-based Ciena, the No. 1 maker of equipment that boosts phone network capacity, have fallen 87% since July. Effective immediately, the repricing applies to all employee stock options with an exercise price above $12.38, Ciena's Wednesday closing price.

Intel Corp. said Monday that it would freeze salaries and exchange employee stock options as the economic slump has weighed on chip orders and its share price has slumped. The Santa Clara, Calif., company, whose profit fell 24% last year, has suspended raises, according to a regulatory filing. The freeze includes executives, though Intel said the value of Chief Executive Paul Otellini's compensation rose 10% to $12.7 million last year.

Delta Air Lines Inc., which is operating under bankruptcy protection, asked a judge Monday to allow the nation's third-largest carrier to void options on about 93 million shares held by 70,000 current and former employees and directors. The Atlanta-based company said the options, if exercised, would provide little to no real value, making the $305,000 a year it costs the airline to maintain, account for and administer the benefit an unnecessary burden on Delta.

Genentech Inc. on Friday raised the lower end of its 2008 forecast on increasing demand for the cancer drug Avastin. Shares of the biotechnology company fell $2.60, or just over 3%, to $78.83 "because they didn't raise the high end" of the forecast range, said Michael King, an analyst with Rodman & Renshaw Inc. in New York. Genentech expects to earn $3.35 to $3.45 a share in 2008, excluding some expenses, the South San Francisco-based company said. That's up from its previous forecast of $3.30 to $3.45, excluding certain expenses such as employee stock options.

It's a classic good news, bad news situation. Like millions of American workers, Lynn Bettinger has employee stock options. Thanks to a great market that helped lift the price of her company's stock, the Idaho-based accountant exercised a chunk of those options at a gain last year. But now, as she contemplates filing her 1999 tax returns, the bad news is sinking in: She's likely to owe a bundle in taxes. Lynn has plenty of company.

WorldCom Inc. plans to scrap stock-option grants for employees to reduce the potential for conflicts of interest after it emerges from the largest U.S. bankruptcy case, people familiar with the matter said. WorldCom, the No. 2 U.S. long-distance phone company, with 20 million customers, will use shares instead as a direct form of pay, the people said. It is one of the measures court-appointed monitor Richard Breeden is expected to announce soon.

Oracle Corp. predicted Monday that expensing employee stock options would cost it $250 million to $300 million in the fiscal year that begins June 1. The software giant's stock rose 8 cents to $13.83.

of Santa Clara said it had a fiscal third-quarter loss because of costs related to employee stock options. The loss was $48.6 million, or 32 cents a share, compared with profit of $41.3 million, or 24 cents, a year earlier. Sales rose 18% to $430.3 million.

Andrew McKelvey, the former chief executive of Monster Worldwide Inc., will relinquish much of his voting stake in the online job-listings company and pay back more than $8 million as part of a settlement of claims that he improperly backdated employee stock options. Monster's announcement of its settlement came the same day McKelvey settled separate options backdating claims alleged by the Securities and Exchange Commission and federal prosecutors. The SEC settlement calls for him to pay a separate penalty of $276,000.

Cisco Systems Inc. said it set the price for new employee stock options at $18.57, Monday's closing price, after a 77% plunge from the stock's record high made many options worthless. Chief Executive John Chambers said in March that he planned to issue additional options as an incentive for workers to remain with firm. Shares of San Jose-based Cisco rose 17 cents to close at $18.74 on Nasdaq. They set a record of $82 on March 27, 2000.

Andrew McKelvey, the former chief executive of Monster Worldwide Inc., will relinquish much of his voting stake in the online job-listings company and pay back more than $8 million as part of a settlement of claims that he improperly backdated employee stock options. Monster's announcement of its settlement came the same day McKelvey settled separate options backdating claims alleged by the Securities and Exchange Commission and federal prosecutors. The SEC settlement calls for him to pay a separate penalty of $276,000.

Vitesse Semiconductor Corp., a maker of chips for telecommunications networks, will pay $8.75 million to settle shareholder lawsuits over the backdating of employee stock options. The company's insurers will cover the amount, and former Chief Executive Louis Tomasetta and former Executive Vice President Eugene Hovanec will pay $1.45 million into a settlement fund for shareholders, Vitesse said in a statement.

The Securities and Exchange Commission sued two former executives at DRS Technologies Inc.'s Engineered Support Systems unit in St. Louis on Tuesday, accusing them of backdating stock options to improperly pay employees $20 million. Gary C. Gerhardt, who was chief financial officer of Engineered Support Systems, and Steven J.

The chairman of KLA-Tencor Corp. retired Tuesday with a less valuable stock option package, becoming the latest insider swept up in the computer chip supplier's efforts to clean up an accounting mess expected to cost as much as $400 million. Kenneth Levy, who founded the company, decided to step down from the board late Monday after KLA acknowledged that it was among dozens of companies nationwide that had improperly booked employee stock options for several years.

Sharper Image Corp. of San Francisco said it needed more time to finalize its fiscal second-quarter results so that its recently reorganized board could determine whether past employee stock options were properly recorded.

Northern California's top federal prosecutor said Thursday that he has formed a task force to investigate whether companies in Silicon Valley committed fraud by improperly issuing employee stock options. The statement by U.S. Atty. Kevin Ryan in San Francisco came after disclosures from more than 65 companies that they were under investigation for retroactively changing the date stock options were granted. About a dozen of those companies, including CNet Networks Inc., KLA-Tencor Corp.

Delta Air Lines Inc., which is operating under bankruptcy protection, asked a judge Monday to allow the nation's third-largest carrier to void options on about 93 million shares held by 70,000 current and former employees and directors. The Atlanta-based company said the options, if exercised, would provide little to no real value, making the $305,000 a year it costs the airline to maintain, account for and administer the benefit an unnecessary burden on Delta.