Tenchu,
Big or small is irrelevant.
Not to me. As an AMD shareholder, I want to make sure that a signing bonus of 1c option grants is reasonable when compared to the whole package.
Why should an exec get free money from the shareholders even when the stock drops?
For the same reason why star athletes get signing bonuses, which they keep even if they break both legs on the practice field the next day. AMD wanted to woo some important talent from Motorola, they paid a signing bonus. It may not seem fair to the average wage earner, but who said life is fair?
Plus the entire concept of options is to reward good performance and tie compensation to it.
Exactly why I am pleased to see the 10:1 ration between the two types of grants in this case. I want the bigger part of the grant to be performance based, not a signing bonus.
The point is that the one-cent options represent free money that AMD doesn't have to expense.
I am not sure about this point. I know they don't expense options based on fair market value (FMV) on the day of grant, but I would think they need to expense the difference between FMV and the grant price in the case of discounted shares.
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