The MacJournals Complaint About the Jobs Backdating Issue

With regard to the concerns expressed by MacJournals News, here

https://friends.macjournals.com/blogstaging/newsItems/departments/inTheNews

their complaint breaks cleanly into two parts.

First, that, because Jobs’ options were “underwater” at the time, there is no issue; and second, that his intent was most likely not to sell them.

Unfortunately, these are easily answered:

1. Although the options were indeed underwater, the point Greif Crystal (and other Wall Street analysts) made was that they were exchanged for other instruments, and so had some inherent value that was captured. Therefore, the underwater bit is irrelevant.

2. What Steve’s sale intent is or was is completely irrelevant to the question of legality. If I broke the speed limit, why I broke it won’t help me much.