My monograph Rich-Hunt is subtitled “The Backdated Options Frenzy and the Ordeal of Greg Reyes.” But if you have not read the monograph, and if you missed the whole frenzy of 2005–2011, you may well wonder: What is a backdated option? Indeed, you may not even be quite sure about what an option is and how it works. So, let me start there.

An option is a type of security that gives a person the right to buy a share of a company’s stock at a specified price. For example, an option might give you the right to buy a share of Google at $5. That would be a very valuable option. Or an option might give you the right to buy a share of Google at $5,000. That would not be so valuable.

Typically, when a company gives options to its employees as a form of compensation, the employees are allowed to buy shares in the company (which is called “exercising the options”), and the price at which they may buy the stock is called the option’s “exercise price,” or “strike price.” Typically, however, they can exercise their options only after a defined span of time (called “the vesting period”) and before a certain date (called “the expiration date”).

So, the value of such option grants rests entirely on the possibility that the stock will be selling above the strike price during the period of time that the employee is permitted to use the option to buy a share. If the stock price is higher than the exercise price, the employee can reap a profit by purchasing a share of stock at the exercise price and then immediately selling that share on the stock market. Of course, if the stock price does not rise above the strike price between the time that the options vest and the time that they expire, then the options are forever worthless.

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