Apple CEO faces more scrutiny over stock options

WASHINGTON — With federal prosecutors investigating the granting of stock options by Apple, the actions of its iconic chief executive, Steve Jobs, are being more closely examined.

A review of how Jobs handled his stock options from 2001 shows that he waited about two-thirds of a year to report the receipt of 7.5 million options that the company admitted last month were improperly backdated. The board meeting at which they were reportedly approved never took place.

The timing of Jobs’ filing was not illegal and beat the deadline. But it broke with the practice common among other Apple officers and directors of submitting the report, in this case a Form 4, within weeks, not months.

“That’s clearly an anomaly worth pursuing,” said Michael Levy, a former federal prosecutor who heads the white-collar group at the McKee Nelson law firm in Washington D.C. “The fact that it was this grant in particular that was subject to such a delayed filing of Form 4 seems very interesting.”

Jobs filed his statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission in August 2002, reporting that he had received the stock options on Oct. 19, 2001. Apple now says the options were actually finalized in December 2001, when the value of the options was significantly less because of changes in the stock price. Jobs filed his personal disclosure about eight months later.

In contrast, three other directors who filed within days of Jobs had waited only four weeks to disclose their options. In fact, the filings of 53 other Form 4s by Apple officers and directors between the start of 1999 and late August 2002 — when new disclosure requirements came into force — took just under four weeks, on average.