(Sure, sure, you could see that one coming up De Anza Blvd.)
Ryan Brant, the founder and former CEO and Chairman of Take-Two, makers of Grand Theft Auto, pleads guilty to illegally covering up the backdating of options.
For those of us on Jobs options watch, there are some disturbing results here. Not only was Brant fined, but he was barred from every holding a top office at a publicly traded company again.
However, the charges were considerably different than what Jobs was involved in.
The SEC and New York prosecutors accused Brant of awarding himself 10 backdated option grants from 1997 to 2003 for a total of about 2.1 million shares of Take-Two stock, all of which he exercised before resigning from the company in October.
Looks like Brant will avoid jail, sparing himself the uncomfortable irony of having to do time with actual car-jackers.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
13 Responses:
February 19th, 2007 at 10:28 am
Classic closing there!
Also thanks for the new colour scheme (surely it’s not just Firefox) makes the content much easier to see now.
February 19th, 2007 at 11:31 am
Fromw hat it sounds like, everyone in Apple is willing to take the fall for his Steveness, I think at Take Two it’s a little different.
February 19th, 2007 at 4:08 pm
Unless I’m missing something, there seems to be a significant difference here. Brant awarded back-dated options TO HIMSELF. That’s certainly robbing the corporate coffers for personal gain.
I haven’t seen any accusations that any of the Apple options were awarded to Jobs.
February 19th, 2007 at 4:57 pm
It is a totally different situation. The Take Two exec backdated options he issued to himself, and falsified records to hide it. Jobs allowed others to issue backdated options and it was recorded properly. It’s the difference between murder 1 and being in the same city where somebody died accidentally.
February 19th, 2007 at 11:25 pm
However, the charges were considerably different than what Jobs was involved in.
Hello? Hello? Is this thing on? :-)
And now the Macalope notes that he needs to do something about the comment color scheme.
February 20th, 2007 at 10:15 am
I quite liked the old colour version. Change is good though. Carry on you wonderful beast.
February 20th, 2007 at 10:56 am
There were many complaints about it being unreadable (dark text on a dark background).
February 20th, 2007 at 12:06 pm
I’m not a big fan of the bright yellow, but overall the site is definitely more readable now. (That said, I didn’t have a problem reading the old color scheme.)
February 20th, 2007 at 4:07 pm
The color looked not bad on an LCD but now that the Macalope sees it on a CRT it looks like crap.
If anyone who’s less color-impared than the horny one would like to send along some hex codes for better suggestions the Macalope is all ears.
Or eyes.
Whatever.
February 20th, 2007 at 4:22 pm
how about just making the background for the comments the same color as the background for the posts?
or at least using the same background color for all the comments. i like the gray better than the yella. the alternating colors is not my favorite thing. i was going to say it’s irritating, but it’s really not irritating.