Saturday, December 16, 2006

Monster Options

Ooooh, dear, looks like the people at Monster.com have been very naughty boys over backdating their option grants:

Monster.com - the online recruitment site - has told the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that it has been over-stating its profits since the late 90s.

Since 1997 until 2005 the site exaggerated profits by a total of $272m. The company said its investigation into backdated share options was almost complete but it expects to make final recomendations in the first quarter of 2007. Several dozen Silicon Valley companies are accused of mis-stating results and backdating share options.

This is the sort of thing that can lead to jail time, depending upon exactly what they were doing.