Mmmmm, Shiny Apple

In a footnote that will surely not matter to most people, but that pisses me off to no end, the Apple backdated options case settled today, with the general counsel who allegedly falsified documents to defraud shareholders paying $2.2M--the $1.6M she made from her share of the backdated options ("Give it back....give!") and a flimsy $200,000 slap on the wrist.

Personally, I think it ought to be Jobs paying money--he's the CEO, and he signed the papers. The whole point of SOX and all that strident fuss over Enron is that the CEO should bear some actual responsibility to go with all the loot he (or she) gets when things go right. Instead, they offered up a scapegoat in the form of this arguably sleazy lawyer, who says she's now going to spend the rest of her life "addressing the greater challenges of social justice and economic disparity" (good thinking--that means you're a good person). I'm honestly not even prepared to condemn her--if she were an Enron villain, they wouldn't have given her such a sweet deal, and in her parting speech she's far from ashamed, which either makes her brazen, stupid, or innocent. Why quibble?

And the fact that the entire company hasn't come tumbling down like a house of cards probably means that this options thing isn't indicative of genuinely widespread and deliberate malfeasance at Apple. But I'll say it again, the fact that Jobs won't even man up for a serious discussion about anything except for how awesome he is doesn't say a lot for the respect he has for the people who pay his bills.

Apple shareholders deserve a lot better than this, but honestly, they probably don't care. And truly, America doesn't care. We just want his damn iPhone so bad that we're willing to allow him to take our money to Vegas, if that's what he wants. I heard an interview on the radio a few weeks ago that said that although right after Enron, everyone was all het up about how companies shouldn't be allowed to give employees a pension built entirely on company stock, no legislation has been passed and the practice continues. Apparently we can't be bothered to see anything through if it's not front page news.

We deserve companies that care about the shareholder. (Yes, Virginia, they do exist. I worked for one--I'm not saying executives wept bitter tears for the shareholder when their stock went down, but return on shareholder investment was a priority that every finance employee was aware of, something not true at every publicly-traded company.) We deserve companies that strive for open, honest, and transparent accounting that doesn't require a team of spelunkers and a ball of string to understand. We deserve companies that make money in spite of being decent, honest, and hardworking. But all we got was this iPhone.

Mmmmmm, shiny.