makers of the BlackBerry have agreed to pay fines of at least 1.4
million US dollars following a financial watchdog's probe into its
stock issuing practices.
Co-Chief Executive Officers Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis and two
of the firm's other senior managers agreed to pay the US Securities
and Exchange Commission the fine following allegations that they had
illegally back-dated stock options, potentially distorting the firms
earnings.
RIM said in a statement that through the settlement the group neither
admitted nor denied the allegations.
Earlier this month the firm's bosses made a similar deal with
regulators of the Toronto Stock Exchange after it emerged that they
may have wrongly backdated stock options for staff as far back as
1996.
In 2007, a probe by RIM's board found that the company had backdated
more than 40 percent of stock options granted to its employees since
1996, including 12 of 16 option grants made to Balsillie and co-chief
executive Mike Lazaridis for two million shares.
No comments:
Post a Comment