Ceos Have All The Luck

The Big Picture: CEO Options: Luck – or something else?

Great summary of a WSJ article showing surprising “coincidences” in CEO stock options being set at a very low point in the company’s stock price so that they end up maximizing their returns. I’m still pissed about my AT&T Wireless stock options being worthless when I left that place because they gave us options at a high point that it never recovered to. Yet all the execs continued to gather options that they exercised to make millions.

Although, one might argue that the best time to give options as incentive to turn things around would be when times are tough. So, is it luck, or a brilliantly engineered rouse?