RIM Executives Pay $68M Options Backdating Fines

Three Research In Motion (RIM) executives, including co-founder Jim Balsillie agreed to pay a CND $68 million settlement on a stock options backdating scheme. The exectuvies must also pay an additional $8 million in administrative penalties. Mr Balsillie added he and the company were “very, very happy to put this behind [them],” Mr. Balsillie also agreed to give up his post as a director at RIM part of the deal. In case you are not familiar with what options backdating is , its simply when executives artificially change the original option issuance date to a date that the stock price was trading at a lower value, hence maximizing their own gains. The idea of stock options is to issue them “at the money”, where executives than work hard to push the stock price up. By backdating, executives are choosing options already “in the money”.