Bloomberg is reporting that Apple's chief executive, Steve Jobs, has been questioned by SEC investigators looking into backdated stock options.
Does that mean he's guilty of anything? Of course not. But it does mean that the Securities and Exchange Commission people are nagging away at a question that an internal report led by Al Gore said had been answered satisfactorily.
Valleyway has "five reasons to fear for Steve Jobs" (which for some reason reminds us of Wired's 1996 issue in which it had 100-odd suggestions for the between-Jobs Apple to save itself from destruction).
They boil down to: (1) the SEC doesn't give up just because Apple had a good quarter (2) Jobs did benefit from the backdating, because the options were swapped for shares (3) board meeting records were faked (4) Apple has moved kinda slowly on all this (5) if the SEC bears down on him, Apple will have to pay out to keep him (and his presence is estimated to add $20bn to the company's capitalisation), and that payout to the SEC could be really big.
Jobs isn't alone in all this stock options anti-joy, of course. The Wall Street Journal has a scoreboard of who's under what in the options mess. Last update was yesterday, but we're sure they'll add this detail on Apple in a moment.
And we haven't even mentioned Pixar... where Disney is still carrying on an internal review after acquiring the company that, um, who used to be the chief executive?
(Previous references: "Is Steve Jobs off the hook after his stock options probe?", Technology, Jan 4.
