SiliconBeat

Lets hope the executives and directors at VeriSign are better at filing their taxes on time than they are filing reports on their stock transactions. In its proxy filed Tuesday the Internet services firm cited eighteen of them as being late last year at least once in filing the necessary paper work with the SEC surrounding reportable stock transactions. That included thirteen of the sixteen, or more than 80 percent, of its named executives and directors on its board.

The worst offender was former head of marketing, Mark McLaughlin, who was late in filing six reports covering 10 transactions; followed by Robert Korzeniewski, a vice president for corporate development, who was late in filing four reports covering seven transactions.

Actually, it would be easier to simply list those who were not late in any filings last
year: from the boardroom, that included Timothy Tomlinson and Kathleen Cote, and from the executive suite that included former chairman and chief executive Stratton Sclavos.

Sclavos, who unexpectedly resigned under cloudy circumstances last May, had quite a few transactions to report. He made $31.5 million exercising options in 2007 and received $10.5 million in severance payments.

Which leads us to one other observation from Verisign’s proxy: of the eight named
executives, all but the new CEO, William Roper, have the word “former” before their title. No wonder the company’s 10-K describes 2007, when it completed a restatement to account for $160.3 million related to backdated options, as “a year of transition.”

But given that three of the seven former executives named in the proxy resigned this year, including one as recently as March 31 who resigned after only 17 months (and $1.4 million in relocation expense), it looks like 2008 is shaping up to be another year of “transition”.