SiliconBeat

Spansion, the bankrupt Sunnyvale flash memory maker that gave its executives a retention-based pay raise in February the same day it fired 3,000 workers, named its fourth chief financial officer in less than five months.

Randy Furr was named to replace Nathan Sarkisian, who served as interim CFO since May 20 when he replaced the previous Read the rest of this entry »

Late Friday afternoon, March 6, Sanmina-SCI filed details of a preliminary settlement reached last month between a group of shareholders who had sued the company and several of its current and former executives and members of its board over the electronic manufacturer’s past stock option practices.

The deal, subject to final approval at a hearing in San Jose May 1, calls for changes in the way the company grants options along with steps to being taken by several individual defendants, including the repricing and/or forfeiture of previous options grants and outright cash payments to the company.

The company also agreed to pay Read the rest of this entry »

Greg Reyes, the former chief executive of Brocade Communications who was convicted of stock-option manipulation in 2007, may settle company claims that he breached his fiduciary duties to the company and unjustly enriched himself, reported Bloomber News late Monday, citing a filing today in federal court in San Francisco.

Attorneys for Reyes and Brocade said the two sides have been “working towards an agreement to resolve through binding arbitration, according to Bloomberg.

A Federal court has ordered that those who purchased shares of Brocade Communication between May 18, 2000 and May 15, 2005 be notified of the certification of a class settlement in a shareholder lawsuit brought against the San Jose networking firm, whose former chief executive , Greg Reyes, was found guilty in the nation’s first criminal trial related to stock-option backdating.

In May, the United States District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco found that Brocade was Read the rest of this entry »

Maxim Integrated Products, the Sunnyvale chip maker that had not filed financial reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission since May 2006 as it struggled to investigate and then account for years of incorrectly priced (i.e., backdated) options, filed six quarterly reports and three fiscal year reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission Tuesday.

The company determined the total extra value given to its executives, directors, employees and others who received backdated options since fiscal 1997 — the difference between the strike price on the options based on their original grant date and the correct price based on the date they were technically granted — was Read the rest of this entry »

The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced the promotion of Michael Dicke to Associate Regional Director for Enforcement in the agency’s San Francisco Regional Office.  Dicke will lead a large staff of attorneys, accountants and other professionals who investigate and litigate federal securities law violations in Northern California, Oregon, Washington, Montana, Idaho, and Alaska, according to a press release put out by the SEC.

Dicke, 44, joined the SEC in 1996 as a staff attorney after five years in private practice.  Since then, he has Read the rest of this entry »

Nancy Heinen (pictured), the former general counsel at Apple has agreed to pay $2.2 million in disgorgement, interest and penalties and be barred from serving as an officer or director of any public company for five years to settle complaints arising from the alleged backdating of Apple options, according to a release put out today by the Securities and Exchange Commission. In doing so, Heinen neither admitted or denied the Commission’s allegations.

According to the complaint, “Heinen caused Apple to fraudulently Read the rest of this entry »