SiliconBeat

Micrel, the San Jose chip maker that fought off a proxy challenge earlier this year from Obrem Capital Management, has proposed an amendment to its 2003 “Incentive Award Plan” that would automatically grant an option to purchase one share of its common stock to any independent director on its board for each share the director purchases on the open market, up to a maximum of Read the rest of this entry »

When Alfred Amoroso was named chief executive of Macrovision in June 2005, he was given an option to buy 500,000 shares and was guaranteed future option awards good for 125,000 shares each that were to be granted twice a year in each of 2006, 2007 and 2008.

A year later, however, Amoroso and/or Macrovision’s compensation committee evidently had second thoughts. Read the rest of this entry »

In order to get Kevin Johnson (pictured below) to leave Microsoft, where he was instrumental in that company’s aborted attempt to buy Yahoo, Juniper agreed to give him $5 million just for signing on the dotted line. He gets $1.5 million for his first year, another $1.5 million for his second, and a final $2 million for his third, according to an SEC filing Monday. Read the rest of this entry »

When asked by an analyst “Do you have a good sense for where morale is today?” among employees at VMware, its new chief executive, Paul Maritz, said the proposed option exchange “went a long way to addressing concern there.”

The question came up as part of the regular conference call the company conducted after releasing earnings Tuesday (which the filing incorrectly said took place 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 »

Why is this man smiling? For a second year in a row, Oracle awarded its founder, chief executive and single largest shareholder, Larry Ellison, a mega-option grant good for 7 million shares, according to a regulatory filing Ellison made last week. The option, which vests over four years, has a strike price of $20.73 when it was awarded July 3. Last year’s option grant was valued at $50 million, according to the company’s proxy from September 2007. The value of the most recent grant has yet to be published.

Ellison, who sold 102.5 million Oracle shares worth $2.2 billion in the last year, continues to own 1.15 billion shares, which were worth Read the rest of this entry »

The welcome wagon at AP Pharma rolled out a huge option award Monday to its new chief executive, Ronald Prentki.

How big was it? Read the rest of this entry »

LeapFrog Enterprises, the Emeryville maker of high-tech learning toys, completed an option exchange covering 4.94 million shares, more than half of which belonged to the company’s chief executive, a day after getting shareholder approval last week.

Jeffrey Katz, who became the company’s CEO after serving on its board for six months, was given an option good for 1.2 million shares priced at $10.30, the closing price on July 5, 2006, the day he took over the company’s reins. He also was given options on 950,000 shares that were “premium” priced at $13.33, a third above the market price that day, and an option good for 500,000 priced at $15.49, or two-thirds higher. Read the rest of this entry »

Blue Coat Systems, the Sunnyvale provider of Web site security systems, revealed today that the Securities and Exchange Commission, which had been conducting an informal investigation into the company’s historical stock option granting practices, has now begun a formal “nonpublic investigation” into the matter, and has issued a subpoena to a “former officer” with the
company.

And who might that former officer be? Read the rest of this entry »