Microsoft To Award Stock, End Options
from the changing-patterns dept
Microsoft announced today that they’re going to route around the whole controversy of whether or not to expense stock options by ending all new stock option grants and offering actual stock instead. While this is getting a lot of press attention, and one person has even said it will “piss off Intel”, it’s really not that big of a deal. From an employee standpoint, the issues will be less complex, since not everyone understands how options work, but most do understand the basic concepts behind actual equity. From an accounting perspective, it will change a few things for Microsoft, but every analyst knows how to account for these changes, and so it won’t impact their opinions of Microsoft. The more people talk about the debate over expensing stock options, the less of a big deal it appears to be.
