SiliconBeat

The fact that Rambus (ticker:RMBS), the Los Altos chip company, awarded bonuses to its executives in 2007 normally wouldn’t be noteworthy given their puny sizes by Silicon Valley standards.

In an 8-K filed Tuesday, the company disclosed that it gave CEO and President Harold Hughes (at right) a bonus of $168,000. Satish Rishi, chief financial officer, only got $90,000. Bottom line: Oracle CEO Larry Ellison sold more stock Tuesday than the top seven executives at Rambus collected in bonus money last year.
 

What caught our eye, however, was that the company said it awarded the bonuses even though the company didn’t meet the ”adjusted pre-tax income target” it had set for executives to receive bonuses. The filing notes that “the Compensation Committee approved the discretionary funding of the Incentive Plan at 40% of the pre-approved target level for fiscal year 2007.”

Why? The filing explains that the committee considered other factors such as market conditions and “increased litigation expenses.”

Indeed, it’s been a hard year for poor Rambus. It lost a big ruling by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. It settled an investor lawsuit over mis-priced stock options.

Sounds bonus-worthy to us.