Amid the fallout from the scandals at Enron, Worldcom and numerous other companies has been a renewed focus on corporate compensation practices. Stock options have become a particular subject of scrutiny due to their widespread use, the increasingly large size of grants to executives and the enormous gains realized by some executives on sales of stock option shares at artificially inflated prices resulting from deceptive (and, in some cases, fraudulent) accounting practices. In response to these and other concerns, corporations, shareholders, regulators and oversight groups have all taken or proposed various actions that are likely to change profoundly the stock… Read more