According to this recent post on JobsintheMoney’s CareerWire blog, hedge funds are looking for accoun­tants and paying top dollar for them: The Rothstein Kass report, The Compen­sation Conundrum, makes clear that even for non-investment profes­sionals, hedge funds pay better than both Wall Street and corporate America. For instance, senior accoun­tants at surveyed firms earned $71,000 median […]

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Two terms, “spring-loading” and “bullet-dodging” have reminded me of the tendency in business to put a positive spin on negative practices. Spring-loading refers to the practice of granting options immedi­ately before releasing good news that will likely increase the stock price, resulting in options that are not in the money techni­cally when granted, but are, […]

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Another tech company has announced it is conducting internal inves­ti­ga­tions into their options grant practices. This time it is Novell, a company known for its NetWare network operating system and more recently as a Linux company. Novell said its audit committee began the inves­ti­gation because of news about irreg­u­lar­ities in the way that dozens of […]

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Tech companies are the primary focus of the SEC’s recently announced and currently ongoing inves­ti­gation into options dating irreg­u­lar­ities, which makes sense given their proclivity for awarding stock options as part of compen­sation packages with employees. An article in BusinessWeek documents what tech company execu­tives have recently termed a “witch hunt”: Many execu­tives are surprised […]

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