Update: The clock has struck. The SEC announced it had filed charges on Tuesday morning. Here's the press release, a very similar "litigation release" and here's the complaint (.pdf).
Now, as we were saying yesterday ....
Pretty much tracking Justin Scheck’s prediction a week ago, the San Francisco Chronicle reports that former Apple GC Nancy Heinen can expect an SEC suit sometime this week, and former CFO Fred Anderson can expect to ink a deal.
The Chron’s Jessica Guynn also lays out Heinen’s likely defense. Recall that an internal investigation found that a big ol’ grant to CEO Steve Jobs, which got under way in August 2001, wasn’t finalized until December, but then was backdated to October. Heinen’s defense, the paper says, will be that SEC rules and Apple policies allow a grant to be moved forward, under certain conditions, and that’s what was decided in December 2001 — to move that grant initiated in August forward into October.
It’s not clear yet whether, in fact, that’s how the SEC’s rules or Apple’s own policies of the time worked. Either way, it doesn’t explain the way a lawyer under Heinen faked minutes to a nonexistent October board meeting to justify the October date. Surely the SEC didn’t have a policy that required one to falsify documents.
We’ll keep you abreast of developments, and invite any securities lawyers — or hell, anyone, really — to weigh in with their opinions on this “forward-dating” spin.
— Brian McDonough
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