Glu Mobile files details of option exchange offer
Glu Mobile, the San Mateo maker of games for mobile phones, filed details today of its plan to offer its employees the opportunity to trade in their underwater options for new ones priced to reflect the stocks current trading value, which as of Wednesday’s close was 59 cents per share.
Glu is offering to exchange options for any employee in the U.S. and the United Kingdom — except for its executive officers and directors on its board — that are priced at $1.25 or more.
For options priced from $1.25 to $1.99, the company is offering a one-for-one exchange for shares to be priced in about a month. The exchange ratio gets progressively smaller as the option strike price grows higher, up to a one-for-four exchange on any options priced at $5.95 or more.
In December, Glu Mobile reported that it’s chief executive, Greg Ballard, had requested a 25 percent cut in his $375,000 salary, which basically undid the pay raise he’d received the year before. The news was delivered the same day the company announced it would be making an unspecified cut in the number of its employees. Glu had 550 employees as of Feb. 28, up from 417 the year before.
Part of that increase came from Glu’s $38.8 million acquisition of mobile-game publisher Superscape in March 2008. Glu wrote off all of the goodwill related to that transaction at the end of December.
