Exactly what evidence do you have in your possession that Apple's management "cooked books" and participated in institutionalized "crookery?"
Do you know something the SEC investigators don't? If you don't, you certainly are playing fast and loose with words that could be considered libelous and/or slanderous. These allegations were thoroughly investigated over a three year period.
The granting of back-dated stock options as a form of employee compensation was practiced by over 5000 major companies. The vast majority of the stock Apple back-dated was for general employee grants that were back-dated to the end of trading on the Monday of the week the employees were hired. Steve Jobs, who gets $1 a year in salary, was granted The problems occurred because of major changes in the Generally Accepted Accounting Practices (GAAP) standards between the time the Stock Options were granted and the time of all the hoopla, when Congress passed a very ill considered bill called Sarbanes-Oxley in 2002. In addition, Apple found and reported the irregularities on its own, after an internal audit looking for past actions that could be impacted by the newly changed GAAP rules. After their internal audit uncovered some problems, Apple itself turned all of its records over to the SEC and cooperated completely with the SEC investigators.
Are these the actions of an institutionalized culture of "crookery" that would "cook the books?" And, exactly how do you propose that "crookery" made Apple's stock rise?
. . . it just means they have good lawyers.
Ironically, it was Apple's Chief Legal Officer who was fired and later fined $3 million for not doing things properly.
Steve Jobs, who gets $1 a year in salary, was granted seven million share options, restricted for three years, at the strike price (IIRC) as of the closing of stockmarket on October 19th... but the board vote was actually taken at a board meeting on December 18th of that year.
The Board had actually voted the options in August ... but delays, a vacation in the legal department, and sheer error, resulted in the paperwork for the option grant to Jobs not being completed until early October. Ordinarily, that would not be an issue, but Apple company by-laws require that such options be granted in the fiscal year the board voted them. Apple's fiscal year ends at Five PM on the last Saturday in September. Thus, the stock grant which was signed and delivered on October 19th (incidentally, at a far higher strike price than it would have had the grant been completed before the end of the Fiscal year) was no longer '"authorized" having timed-out. Nancy Heinman, Apple's Chief Legal Officer decided that to make things kosher, she would cobble up minutes for a telephone meeting of the Board of Directors—that supposedly occurred the day before the options were granted—showing a vote for the grant. She apparently figured that these minutes could be validated—and the "vote" made official by the Board accepting them (after all, it merely duplicated the already voted on action from August)— and these bogus minutes put into record with a vote at the next scheduled BOD meeting in December. Unfortunately for her, the board declined to rubber stamp the minutes for the non-existent meeting, and instead merely voted Jobs' options again, and back-dating them to the date the transfer actually occurred.
Two years later, a year before the strike date when he could exercise his options, Jobs cancelled the options in exchange for a transfer of $70,000,000 in three year restricted shares of Apple Common Stock.
Do you know something the SEC investigators don’t? If you don’t, you certainly are playing fast and loose with words that could be considered libelous and/or slanderous.
Get real.