U.S. employers hold wide-ranging views on the appropriateness of expensing stock options, but the vast majority (87 percent) believe that option expensing will be mandated in the US within five years.
US Airways, the airline that filed for bankruptcy-court protection two weeks ago, has its employees upset over $6 million in bonuses it plans to start paying to midlevel and senior executives in October.
Joining Coca-Cola and the Washington Post Corp., Bank One Corp. has become the third major corporation to announce in recent days that it will deduct the value of executive stock options as an expense.
The gesture by such a prominent member of the business community could set the stage for other major companies to follow suit as investors and government officials clamor for greater transparency in U.S. accounting practices, according to the Associated Press.
A survey of about 6,000 managers and employees in the U.S. and Canada reveals that only about 40 percent of them knew how they could increase their salaries or bonuses.
Despite higher unemployment, companies are having as much difficulty attracting and retaining key salespeople as they did when the economy was thriving, according to a recent survey by the consultant Watson Wyatt Worldwide.
Major corporations, including Marriott International and Texas Instruments Inc., are pressing the Internal Revenue Service to kill or delay a plan to impose payroll taxes on incentive stock options and employee stock purchase plans.
The Securities and Exchange Commission has voted unanimously to require companies to disclose more clearly a number of details that will help investors keep tabs on how stock options are doled out and how those options could affect earnings.
