It's somewhat of a departure from say, 50 years ago in the United States of America. Options are a substitute for salary. Options were invented when executive salaries were deemed too high.
Now a detail in compensation practice will get you three-plus months in jail.
Now a detail in compensation practice will get you three-plus months in jail
How is it merely a "detail"?
If, on March 31 of a given year, you hand someone a stock option, you don't get to pick "today" as the lowest price the stock has had in the interval of March 1 thru March 31.
That's not a "detail". That's not just a small problem with the paperwork. That's nothing but obvious fraud.
IMO. IANAL. But I've had stock options given to me. And the price was set for that day, not for some date that was clearly a lie. And this all happened 20+ years ago, long before these sordid SV practices came to light.
Edit: One time my stock option grant was worse than "today". What happened is we were a small company, the BOD met a few days earlier and approved grants, my manager didn't give me my grant for a few days. So it was something like this:
manager: "Here's your stock grant for $20 a share".
me: "but the stock closed today at $18 a share. So I'm already 10% underwater".
Such were the perils of working at a small company that wasn't trying to game the system.
Not that there weren't ways to change employee compensation. In 2009 (and I'm sure at various dates before that), many companies went to their stockholders to ask them to approve re-pricing because employee options were way under water.
I don't recall the converse ever happening. I'd like to hear of a company going to its stockholders and asking for approval to tear up grants in the other direction. Something like this: "we gave out employees stock options at $10, but the stock is now $30. We want to take back those grants and give them new ones at the current price". Nope, that doesn't happen.
I.e. there are already many ways companies can legally "cheat" without having to commit obvious fraud.
