Sinnet re options exercised by Rip you asked:
..."rmarchma, why you think that the options Rip exercised in 2004 could have been exercised into 2005? If he can't and have to exercise in 2004, then he has to pay tax for the gains associated with it."
I have said this a couple of times already, but I will say it one more time. The latest stock options exercised by Rip were not due to expire until Nov. 10, 2006 almost two years from now. Rip did not have to exercise on these options in 2004, or either in 2005 for that matter. He could have waited until Nov. 2006 to exercise these stock options, if he wanted to.
This was not the case with Goldberg. He exercised on 30,000 stock options that were expiring in September and October of 2004. Goldberg set up a prearranged 10b5-1 trading plan to exercise on the expiring options and to sell the stock, or at least some of the stock. He has only sold 15,000 of the exercised shares that we are aware of at this point. However, I don't fault Goldberg's exercise and sale at all.
An excerpt from my first post on this matter as follows:
However, I do not think that Mr. Tilden's sale is preplanned using 10b5-1 rules. Rather I think that Rip's is a discretionary voluntary sale. It appears from the Form 4 that Rip exercised on 23,831 options that had an expiration date of Nov. 2006. He then sold 17,831 of these exercised shares, and it appears that he kept 6,000 of these exercised shares, at least for the time being. IDCC's current preplanned sales rules permit selling vested RSUs and options that are due to expire within one year. Since Rip's exercised options expiration date was after one year, I don't think it was a preplanned sale.