What he did was wrong, but he was clueless and meant well
Enterprise software developer Selectica (ticker SLTC) threw out its chief executive Friday and got a new one.
The old one, Stephen Bennion, “was aware of or was involved with retrospective selection” of some stock option grant dates (also known as back dating) while serving as the San Jose company’s then chief financial officer, the company said in a press release distributed by PRNewswire. Bennion also received some backdated options himself, but the special committee investigating the problem can’t prove that he backdated his own grant, which they say he never exercised.
As for the back dating activity he was “aware of or was involved with,” the committee
can’t prove he was “intentionally” doing wrong, or that he “understood” the activity
“would result in a misstatement of the Company’s financial results.”
Why would a CFO know about stuff like that?
Bennion wasn’t alone in his involvement in the back dating of options, but each of the
other individuals responsible, which the company did not name, have “previously left the company for reasons unrelated to the options investigation.”
The company says its outside directors did not select any of the dates in question but that former members of its compensation committee, “executed grant documents prepared by others that appear to have reflected effective dates for option grants that were in some cases retrospectively selected.”
However, Bennion is not going far. His knowledge of the company, its customers and
suppliers is deemed too important for him to leave, so he has agreed to become vice president in charge of the company’s “Configuration, Pricing, and Quoting Business Unit.”
Insert joke here.
Robert Jurkowski, a member of Selectica’s board since last year, was named to replace
Bennion as chairman and chief executive.
Selectica has been warned repeatedly that its stock risks being delisted from the Nasdaq market because of its continued inability to file financial reports with the SEC. And although Selectica has “substantially completed its investigation” into its option dating practices, it has yet to calculate the restatements it will need to make to prior periods.
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Guys, Selectica is a dead company. Its only lifeline is that it is the configurator that Cisco uses, and Cisco has put so much money into customizing it, they can’t dump it. If not for that, Selectica would be gone.
Lets see, SLTC has a market cap of 43 million dollars and a stock price of $1.40.
The prior CEO is evading those dastardly stock options expenses to the tune of………….. 50 bucks maybe?
I mean really, this story is laughable. You can’t make money on SLTC stock, you can’t make money on SLTC stock options, maybe the CEO was envious of the REAL backdating scandals and playing dress-up?