SiliconBeat

Cisco Systems (ticker:CSCO) recently appointed Michael Powell, former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission and current son of former Secretary of State Colin Powell, to its board of directors. And that’s created a somewhat odd situation at the the San Jose networking company.

 According to a  story in The New York Times on Sunday, Powell can’t serve on certain committees such as the audit and compensation because he’s not considered independent enough. Why? The company once paid his father more than $100,000 in speaking fees.

On the other hand, Cisco director Richard M. Kovacevich is considered independent, even though he is chairman of Wells Fargo which may let Cisco borrow as much as $120 million.

To understand the tortured logic, check out the Times story here.

The first half of 2007 saw a big comeback for that Silicon Valley favorite, the IPO. And the second half of the year figured to be even better.

Ah, but then there was the nasty little business regarding the sub-prime market implosion and the housing market meltdown. And suddenly, the stock market went bonkers. Does this spell doom for the IPO?

Breathe easy, Silicon Valley. According to a report from Renaissance Capital released Friday, the number of IPOs in the U.S. in the third quarter was 40, up for 31 in 2006. So far there have been 154 IPOs in 2007, compared to 198 last year.

We counted 2 IPOs in Silicon Valley during the third quarter: VMware (ticker:VMW) and DemandTec (ticker:DMAN). That’s a total of 16 so far this year compared to 11 in all of 2006.

But the year could end on a strong note. Over the past three months, 11 Silicon Valley companies have filed to go public. It’s always hard to predict the timing, but at least a few will probably go public before 2008, making this officially a banner year.

In a filing Thursday, Applied Micro Circuits reported that its board “approved a restructuring plan back on August 21 to reorganize the Company’s operations and reduce its workforce” back on August 21. It’s the company’s fifth restructuring plan since 2003.

The plan became effective Thursday, the same day as the filing, and is to affect
“approximately 4 percent” of its employees. The total severance cost involved in laying them off — approximately 25 folks based on the 619 workers Applied Micro had at the end of its fiscal year March 31 — was estimated to be between $600,000 to $900,000.

The Sunnyvale maker of integrated circuits, which spent $9.1 million in its last quarter to buy back 2.9 million shares, says savings from the restructuring should amount to
“approximately $2.8 million annually.”

In a filing three days earlier the company reported that its compensation committee adopted a new executive severance benefit plan that increased what some of its executives would get in case they are terminated after a “change in control.”

The filing didn’t mention it was an increase, but in comparing the new plan with terms listed in the company’s most recent proxy, we found out that the salary benefit paid to its chief executive if terminated after the company was bought, for example, would rise from $600,000 to $800,000, that a bonus that would have been pro-rated depending on when the change in control took place under the previous plan will now be a full year’s worth no matter what (currently $300,000), that the payment of extended health benefits would be lengthened from 18 to 24 months, and that the vesting of equity awards would be extended from those that would have vested over an additional 24-month’s to instead include 100 percent of all unvested shares.

Ah, what a difference four miles can make.

In an 8-k filed on Thursday, Netgear (ticker:NTGR) of Santa Clara disclosed that it plans to move its corporate headquarters to north San Jose. The company signed a lease for 142,000 square feet of office space on East Plumeria Drive. No doubt San Jose boosters are popping champagne corks as we speak.  

For our real estate obsessives out there, the lease says Netgear will pay $214,050 in monthly rent to start, or $1.50 per square foot.

Netgear, which makes networking products for the home, went public in mid-2003 and has seen its stock price about double since then.

Safra Catz, Oracle’s president and chief financial officer, doesn’t sell stock often. But when she does, she goes big.

On Wednesday, Oracle (ticker:ORCL) filed two Form 4s disclosing that Catz had exercised 500,000 options at $8.68 per share this week and then immediately sold them at an average of $21.82 per share. That gave her a net gain of $6.57 million. 

That gain is a testament to Oracle’s stock price, which has become The Little Engine that Could over the past two years. It’s climbed from just above $12 per share during that time to $21.77 on Wednesday. 

As for Catz, she’s now sold a total of $51.5 million worth of stock since 2004 for a total profit of $29.86 million.

After spending $7.8 billion in fiscal 2007 buying back 297 million shares of its own stock, Cisco Systems is asking shareholders to approve more than doubling the number of shares left in its current stock incentive plan to 394 million, according to its proxy filed Wednesday.

Two years ago Cisco asked its shareholders to approve a stock incentive plan covering 350 million shares, which, along with shares left over from a previous plan, gave it a bank of 567 million shares with which to reward its workforce.

Since then the company has doled out to employees a net total of 413 million shares by way of option grants and other stock awards. The 154 million shares they have left in the plan won’t cover the estimated 185 million shares Cisco will give out in its current fiscal year, so its asking shareholders to approve adding 209 million more.

And although the company is asking its shareholders to extend the plan through fiscal 2012, it says that the new batch of stock will only last through 2009, after which it will need to seek more.

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As Opsware (ticker:OPSW) at last succumbs to the loving embrace of Hewlett-Packard (ticker:HPQ), its executives are getting one last parting gift for their part in the $1.6 billion merger.

On Wednesday, Opsware filed a series of form 4s detailing the amount of cash HP was giving to each executive for the vested but unexercised portion of their stock options. Last week, we posted about the cash windfall each Opsware executive was getting for their stock, including founder Marc Andreessen, who bagged $98 million. 

But those figures didn’t cover the vested but unexercised portion of the options. HP canceled those and handed out B.W.O.C. (big wads of cash) to compensate execs for their troubles.

Andreessen, one of the founders, is the big winner (no surprise) with another $19.2 million.

The other lottery winners include: Read the rest of this entry »

With Google’s stock price hitting an all-time high, employees might be looking at their options and wondering how much higher the share price can rise. There was even word this summer of some employees jumping ship to Facebook to get in pre-IPO.

Now comes word that Google (ticker:GOOG) is offering “refresher equity options,” which we think means “more” to current employees. Michelle Leder of footnoted.org picked this up in a post this morning that you can check out here.

Sales of existing home sales fell in August to a five-year low, making the timing particularly sweet for Affymetrix President Kevin King.

Back in December when King was hired, Affymetrix promised him relocation assistance in selling his home in New Jersey “through a third-party service provider.” Last week King signed a contract with a relocation services firm for the sale of his New Jersey home for $2,225,000, “which was an appraised value of Mr. King’s house as determined by independent real estate professionals”, according to an 8-K filing the Santa Clara company made Tuesday.

We found that the median price for a home in the northern part of New Jersey where King used to work was $557,500 during the second quarter of 2007, up 6.3 percent from the year before, according to the National Association of Realtors.

Affymetrix, which makes products used in genetic analysis, said it would cover the loss on the actual sale of the house to a third party, and that it would likewise be entitled to any gain on the sale. The company will also pay the relocation firm “certain expenses associated with holding and selling the house.”

Good luck. Home sales in New Jersey during the second quarter of 2007 were down 16.5 percent from the year before.

We noticed something curious in Sun Microsystems proxy filed Tuesday afternoon. In its introduction to two proposals put forward by shareholders for a vote, the company did not name the shareholder requesting the vote or how many shares they own.

One of the proposals on the agenda for Sun Microsystem’s upcoming annual meeting Nov. 8 is asking for adoption of a rule seeking a simple majority vote on most issues. As the proposal puts it:

Our current rule allows a small minority to frustrate the will of our shareholder majority. For example, in requiring a 75%-vote on certain key governance issues, if our vote is an overwhelming 74%-yes and only 1%-no — only 1% could force their will on our 74%-majority.

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