Jobs plays options brouhaha for laughs

Apple CEO Steve Jobs shrugged off questions about stock option backdating and environmental policies at the company's annual meeting of shareholders on Thursday - something he can well afford to do, having presided over a 50 per cent rise in Apple's stock over the past year.

Jobs drew laughs from most shareholders as he sardonically responded to questions from representatives of the AFL-CIO and Greenpeace at the meeting. Several proposals were submitted by shareholders, including one calling for an option-dating policy and another that would subject executive compensation to a shareholder vote.

All such proposals were rejected in preliminary voting.

Apple's board of directors has been under fire from corporate-governance organisations such as Institutional Shareholder Services over its defense of Jobs' actions concerning stock option backdating at Apple. A US Securities and Exchange Commission investigation has charged two former Apple employees with improper conduct but that investigation cleared the company and the SEC has not charged Jobs with anything.

In response to heated questioning from Brandon Reese, a representative of the AFL-CIO labour union and the sponsor of a shareholder proposal calling for shareholder oversight of executive compensation, Jobs said: "Unless you think there's a conspiracy involving the SEC too, I don't know what to say."

Reese asked Jobs if he would reimburse Apple for any gains he received from the backdated options. Apple has admitted that Jobs received two options packages that came with cherry-picked exercise dates but he never exercised those options, exchanging them for a restricted stock award in 2003.

Jobs said the option grant he received in October 2001 was actually approved by the board in August 2001, when the stock price was lower. "I didn't ask the company to pay me back," he retorted, as several hundred attendees at Apple's corporate headquarters broke into laughter.

A representative of the Teamsters Union asked to speak with Bill Campbell, the head of Apple's compensation committee, but was rebuffed by Jobs. Jobs makes only $1 a year in salary, but hundreds of millions in stock awards made him the highest-paid CEO in the US last year.

Jobs joked: "I get 50 cents a year for showing up, and the other 50 cents is based on my performance."

The Teamsters wanted Apple to be more transparent on how it links executive compensation to performance, but its proposal failed to pass.

Tom Krazit writes for CNET News.com