Apple pays off pension fund

Apple has paid $14m to a New York pension scheme to end a lawsuit over its backdating of share options for Steve Jobs and other executives. The company has already paid to end investigations into backdating by the Department of Justice and other shareholders. Apple is paying $14m for shareholders in the New York City Employee …

[JaitcH]

"Apple also promised to improve its corporate governance practises and compliance checks."

How will Apple achieve this when Jobs treats Apple like a personal fiefdom and a private company? Hard to achieve when the fox has keys to to hen house.

And whose money will be used to pay off all the administrative fines - no doubt the shareholders will cover Jobs malfeasance?

Can 2010 get any worse for Jobs? (And Android sales are now ahead of iSO!)

iPhans click he red box below.

[Alastair Dodd 1]

Well said

I hope soon everyone will realise Jobs is seriously a underhand dodgy BS and not worship him like they do. He is a ultimate capitalist in the way that if there was money in it he'd screw your dead corpse. Mind you the way business laws are in the US soon enough people will be campainging for his canonisation..

[Anonymous Coward]

We know who is paying for this!

WE know who is paying for this.

For example the US price for the macmini server 999 US Dollars

Equivalent prices in Europe for same spec machine

UK Pounds 929 exchange rate USD/GBP 1.59 = 1476 USD

Swiss Frank 1499 exchange rate USD/CHF 1.03 = 1554 USD

Euro (Ireland) 1149 exchange rate USD/EUR 1.39 = 1594 USD

So we europeans are paying 50% more for the same article made in China!!

http://www.theregister.co.uk/Design/graphics/icons/comment/unhappy_32.png

[Gene Cash]

Not me...

Do what I do and don't buy Apple products. Simple as that. Vote with your money.

[Richard Parkin]

Perhaps they will take it out of his salary ...

... which I think is in the region of $1.00 per annum.

[Anonymous Coward]

"iPhans click he red box below."

What a dick.

"Can 2010 get any worse for Jobs?" I don't know what parallel universe you are living in, but 2010 has been a pretty good year for Jobs and his businesses. The company that he founded over 30 years ago has superseded it's arch-rivals in terms of value*, they have successfully launch an new product class that their competitors are again clambering, and so far failing, to better, the 'lemon' that you so often refer to has been a sales **success** despite it's well publicise and overblown issues, to he extent that manufacturing cannot keep up with demand. Android may now have a larger share, Apple's individual sales compared to their hardware competitors is significantly better; in figures, ~3% of the overall mobile market and ~39% of the profits. Comparing Android sales to iPhone sales is overly simplistic as between HTC, Samsung, Motorola et al. there are around 30-40 different phones, there are essentially 2 iPhones on the market. Apple have 100% of iOS's share, Android's share is divided by **all** the manufacturers in that space, many of which will be soon developing phones for Microsoft too. Disney/Pixar produced Toy Story 3 to critical acclaim and has to date grossed over $1 billion **in 4 months** and Christmas is just around the corner. Oh, and it's a year since he had his liver transplant and he's still here. If this is a bad year for Jobs, I'd happily swap my year...

* I, and for that matter everyone else know that it's linked to share value etc. and understand what this means, but as it stands Apple posses a greater **value** than Microsoft.

[Tempest]

iPhans seem over-sensitive

I have watched with interest just how easy it is to get Apple adopters / fanbois / iPhans to fall for the bait!

That said, comparing iOS and Android is not like comparing hardware - Apple has so many versions out on the street which is the intent of their marketing - first adopted by automobile companies.

Android, in any hardware, is still a sale just as iOS, in any version, is a sale. And as someone pointed out Android is being adopted faster than iOS at the present time.

Nielsen said that Android chewed away at the competition and increased its share even more dramatically, rising from 14 to 32 per cent. Apple meanwhile, let some 7 per cent of users slip through its fingers and fell from 32 to 25 per cent, despite its release of the Iphone 4 in June, while Blackberry took an 8 per cent dunk and dropped from 34 to 26 per cent.

Guess this must put iOS in 3rd place.

[Anonymous Coward]

Who said I was an iPhan...

I was merely pointing out that 2010 wasn't a particularly bad year for Jobs at all. Seem to me that you fandroids are just as touchy. So how is that race to the bottom?

[Magnus_Pym]

Back dated stock options?

as in

"I've back dated these 10 million Apple shares that I've just been given to 1983 when they where worth a penny a share. so I only pay tax on the capital gain of $100,000 instead of gazillion dollars they are worth today."

and that's legal?

[Rob 103]

Not quite....

When a company grants you a share option it means that you can acquire the share at a "given price" at a certain point in the future. If in that time the share price goes up, then you are sitting on profit.

The "given price" is usually the closing price of the share on the day the option was granted. However, if the share price was lower two weeks ago, backdating the "given price" to that day would mean your option would be worth more.

Doing this could be seen as screwing other shareholders out of money - which is OK if they agree to it but fraud if they didn't know about it.

Note: there are some generalisations here but that's the gist.

[Tempest]

The US SEC said

what Apple, and many other companies did, is fraud if it is not reported to the SEC.

What Jobs seems lack lack is the understanding of morals.

[LPF]

I've got an idea

Jobs can annouce he's retiring now, and we will see how big a hit that pension fund takes! They should be glad that he came back and is providing for their retirment the ungrateful scum!

[Ted Treen]

Thank you.

Red box duly ticked, as requested.

Any tangible evidence or proof to back up your diatribe which appears to be based on personal prejudice & little else?

[RegisterThis]

Looks like you just ticked a troll off!

... that's all.

[Anonymous Coward]

Corruption at work

So, in other words, if you're rich you can pay everyone off, including the people pursuing a fraud prosecution against you. So much for "justice".

[Anonymous Coward]

Ipod ? more like l pocket

may be apple should trade mark " I pocket "

before other people start to copycat them !