Steve Jobs’ Back Dated Stock Options Scandal

Steve Jobs was accused of back dated options trading, in which stocks could be purchased from Apple at previous price points which had since passed (e.g. purchasing 100 shares of stock for $100 at the January 2010 price point, when those same stocks were worth $200 because the actual date was July 2010). Jobs did this to give his key people stock options which were so enormous in value that these employees would never even consider taking their talents and skillsets elsewhere. Back dating is legal, if properly reported within official corporate records. After the backdated stock options scandal was exposed by various media outlets, 200 U.S. companies came under investigation for doing the exact same thing. Jobs escaped any wrongdoing by effectively throwing Apple’s CFO Fred Anderson under the bus, a person who was instrumental in the hard fought come back of Apple. Anderson was forced to resign and pay back restitution to the sum of $3,600,000 ($3.6 million) in penalties. In reality, Anderson explained this process to Jobs, and Jobs fully understood the implications, yet chose to place blame squarely upon the Anderson with the rationale that a CFO must oversee all practices related to accounting within a corporation. It was estimated at the time that had Jobs gone to prison for back dating, Apple would have dropped in value by $22,000,000,000 ($22 billion)