Business in brief: Hundreds gained from option date
About 1,400 corporate directors received option grants whose timing was manipulated, according to an academic study released Monday.
Of all options grants to directors, about 9 percent were received at “lucky” times – when the stock price was equal to a monthly low, according to a Harvard Law and Economics paper released Monday.
After studying the period from 1996 to 2005, academics at Harvard Law School, Cornell University and INSEAD in France estimated that about 800 lucky grant events were the result of opportunistic timing.
Options give the recipient a right to buy a stock at a fixed “strike price,” generally set at the stock’s market price the day of the grant. Options holders benefit if the stock rises above the strike price. In the backdating scandal, companies have dated options to days when the stock was low, enhancing the potential benefit.
Moffett Field, Calif.
NASA to feed more to Google
Anyone with an Internet connection will soon be able to get three-dimensional maps of the moon, or real-time tracking of the space shuttle, after NASA agreed Monday to give more of its imagery and information to Google Inc.
The collaboration marks another step in a partnership announced 15 months ago when Google unveiled plans to build a campus at the NASA center, located a few miles south of the company’s headquarters.
Under the arrangement, NASA will feed Google with its weather forecasting information, three-dimensional maps of the moon and Mars, and real-time tracking of the International Space Station and space shuttle flights.
San Francisco
EBay to take new step in China
EBay Inc. is expected to announce plans today to open a new Chinese Web site as part of a joint-venture with a Beijing-based Internet company, signaling a strategic shift in the online auction company’s Chinese operations.
The new site – operated by online portal and wireless operator Tom Online Inc. – will focus on the domestic Chinese market, according to a person familiar with the deal who requested anonymity because it hadn’t been formally announced.
EBay’s current Chinese portal, www.ebay.com.cn, will become a platform for Chinese merchants to sell to international buyers.
New York
Pension plans’ funding improves
The health of traditional pension plans at Standard & Poor’s 500 companies improved in 2006, according to a Credit Suisse report.
The funding levels for traditional pension plans at the companies improved for the fourth straight year, the report said.
Credit Suisse estimates that the S&P 500 companies with traditional pension plans could finish 2006 with a “funding rate” of 95 percent, up from 90 percent at the end of 2005.