The Ontario Securities Commission has launched a probe of Research In Motion’s stock option practices. An OSC spokesperson said the review was launched in early October, which is not long after the company announced it would have to restate past financials because of its options accounting. Another tech company is having difficulties with their optionsContinue reading “BlackBerry maker getting the probe on options backdating”
Tag Archives: GAAP
Pension brouhaha south of the border
FASB is coming out with some tough new standards relating to defined benefit pensions that is expected to result in significant new liabilities (or increases to existing ones) for companies that had been accounting for their pensions under the more lax requirements of the old standard. Defined benefit pension plans are definitely the more complicatedContinue reading “Pension brouhaha south of the border”
Options backdating investigation not making the SEC any friends
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 surprisedContinue reading “Options backdating investigation not making the SEC any friends”
First options backdating investigation initiated by SEC
Brocade Communications Systems has become the first company to be formally investigated by the SEC regarding the recent options backdating issue. According to the SEC’s complaint document, which names three former executives of the company as plaintiffs, from 2000 through 2004 the company inflated net income by understating their options-related expense through fraudulent schemes toContinue reading “First options backdating investigation initiated by SEC”
What Enron meant to me
Enron burst into flames around January 2002. I was just starting my second semester at Brock University in the esteemed Bachelor of Accounting program when the Houston-based company went down. What did this mean to a 19-year-old Canadian accounting student with no share holdings and no knowledge of the energy trading giant from Texas? Actually,Continue reading “What Enron meant to me”