SiliconBeat

NetApp asked its shareholders to approve a proposal to allow a “one-time option exchange” for its employees at a special meeting held April 21. The measure was approved, according to a filing May 5 that detailed the terms of the exchange program. What wasn’t known until today was just how close the company came to losing that vote.

In its annual 10-K filing with the SEC Wednesday, the Sunnyvale supplier of data storage systems and services revealed the vote totals. The number of shares voted in favor Read the rest of this entry »

Altigen Communications, the Fremont provider of Internet phone systems that had scheduled a special shareholders meeting for Tuesday to seek approval of a new equity incentive plan and employee stock purchase program, postponed the meeting late Friday in order “to provide adequate time for AltiGen to present additional information to its stockholders in light of certain recent public comments made by one of the company’s existing stockholders,” according to a press release the company put out.

The “existing shareholder” making the public comments would be Read the rest of this entry »

Remember back in August 2007, when VMware staged the most impressive initial public offering of a technology company since Google? The planned offering price for the 33 million shares it sold to the public for the first time was first estimated to be between $23 and $25, a range that was later raised to between $27 and $29. The shares finally went out at the top of the second range, and ended their first day at $51, up 76 percent.

In anticipation of the public offering, VMware directors authorized broad-based grants of options to employees totaling more than 35.6 million shares of stock with a price of $23.

Shares of VMware, which makes software to enhance the computing power and flexibility of servers, while controlling costs and energy consumption, soared to as high as $125 within less than three months of its debut. It was the best performing local IPO last year in the best year for initial offerings since 2000, the year the dot.com bubble burst.

That was then and this is now. Read the rest of this entry »