Corporate Counsel - March 2010 (Sample Issue)

INBOX
ARE WE DONE YET?

IT’S TAKING A LONG TIME FOR WILLIAM Sorin to put his stock option backdating woes behind him. The former general counsel of Comverse Technology, Inc., he’s already spent a year in federal prison for his role in altering option grants at the company. Now Sorin also must pay $1 million to partially fund a class action settlement.

RAMIN TALAIE/BLOOMBERG NE WS

The company’s former CEO, Jacob “Kobi” Alexander, will also kick in $60 million to the settlement, which was announced in December. The money will be used by Comverse to help fund a $225 million settlement in a class action brought on behalf of its shareholders. In return, the company—the world’s largest maker of voicemail software— will drop its own suit against its former executives, who will drop their counter-suits against Comverse.

In 2006 federal prosecutors and the
Securities and Exchange Commission
charged Sorin, Alexander, and another
Comverse executive with a scheme to
reap millions of dollars in profits by
changing the grant dates of stock
option awards from 1998 to 2002.
According to the government, Sorin
made $14 million in profit by exercis-
ing his own options, of which about

to his request to avoid jail time.

But two days before he was sentenced, Sorin says in court documents, the government “reneged on this promise” and opposed his request, pending.

Sorin was the first corporate executive to serve time for options-related crimes. His attorneys did not respond to requests for comment. —Amy mIllEr William Sorin