According to a Reuters story, the former general counsel and senior vice-president of Monster Worldwide, Myron Olesnyckyj, pleaded guilty on February 15, to manipulating stock options. He is accused of having backdated his options by changing the option grant dates to coincide with periods when the stock was at a low. This fraudulent manoeuvre enabled him to boost his payout when the options were exercised.
This was a dangerous game in which several Monster senior executives allegedly participated. The Wall Street Journal’s reporting of the matter caused Monster’s share price to plunge 7% on NASDAQ last June. Mr. Olesnyckyj was fired in November after an internal investigation.
Monster is one of 170 companies caught up in this vast probe by U.S. authorities of possible stock option backdating, including Broadcom, Apple, KLA-Tencor, McAfee and Take-Two. The accused executives are said to have inflated their own compensation by exercising their options just before a positive announcement leading to a rise in the share price.