Broadcom tagged again

Here's a good one: The SEC has leveled new allegations that a Broadcom subcommittee improperly granted stock options. Why improperly? Because one of the subcommittee’s two official members was dead. Not that the loss of board member Myron Eichen seemed to make that much difference, since company co-founder Henry Samueli was allegedly playing a lead role in signing off on the backdating of stock options. The SEC allegations are detailed in a complaint that was part of the settlement deal with former Broadcom executive Nancy Tullos. She's scheduled to be sentenced in the criminal case May 5. The Daily Journal's Gabe Friedman has the details (unfortunately no link).

The SEC lawyers allege Tullos discussed backdating in a January 2002 e-mail sent to Broadcom's senior officers, including general counsel David Dull and one of two company co-founders, identified by sources as Henry Samueli. In the e-mail, she solicited input on behalf of the company's former CEO, Henry T. Nicholas III, for an "opportunistic date" to grant stock options to company executives, according to the SEC. "The senior officers, including Tullos, knew, or should have known, that one member of the two-person option committee had died in July 2001 and had not been replaced," SEC lawyers wrote in the complaint.

A federal criminal investigation is moving forward, with Tullos helping prosecutors. It gets a little convoluted, but the real question is whether the OC tech firm's co-founders, Samueli and Nicholas, will at some point be implicated.