BlackBerry maker rocked by options scandal

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd.’s co-chief executive will give up the chairman’s post after an internal probe identified a quarter-billion dollars in improper accounting for employee stock options at the mobile device company.

Jim Balsillie, who will remain on RIM’s board, and co-CEO Mike Lazaridis also will pay up to $4.25 million apiece to defray the cost of the internal investigation and will return an as-yet undisclosed amount of personal profit from backdated options.

•The three billionaires who run online search leader Google Inc. will settle for a $1 salary again this year while four other top executives will receive raises of $200,000 apiece, according to documents filed Monday.

It marks the third consecutive year that Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt and co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have limited their salaries to a $1. It’s a sacrifice that they can afford because they have gotten rich off their large stakes in Google, whose stock price has more than quintupled from its initial offering price of $85 in August 2004.

Page and Brin are each worth about $14 billion while Schmidt’s fortune stands at $5 billion, according to Forbes magazine’s annual ranking of the nation’s wealthiest people.

•Barnes & Noble Inc., the nation’s largest bookseller, forecast profit and sales for this fiscal year that were well below analysts’ estimates, sending its shares down 11 percent Monday.

The New York-based retailer reaffirmed its earnings guidance for the year ended Feb. 3 despite disappointing sales. It also said it was closing its Internet distribution center located in Memphis, Tenn.

Upon closing its Memphis facility, all Internet orders will be handled by the company’s new distribution center in Monroe, N.J., and its Reno, Nev., facility.

•Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said Monday that it has fired a Wal-Mart systems technician for recording phone conversations between the company’s PR office and a newspaper reporter and for intercepting text messages without authorization.

The move is the result of an internal investigation that began on Jan. 11 when someone expressed concerns to the world’s biggest retailer about the matter, Wal-Mart said. It did not identify the technician.

Wal-Mart’s internal investigation initially found that the technician had monitored and recorded phone conversations between Wal-Mart’s public relations staffers and a reporter from the New York Times.