Perspective on The Past Week's Stories

This past week the SEC announced two long-awaited settlements in stock options backdating cases, Mercury Interactive and Brocade Communications.  Practitioners and scholars alike wanted to learn what the new SEC policy on corporate penalties would be.  We have learned that the SEC will impose penalties on the entity, but the two settlements do not offer much insight into why Mercury is paying $28 million and Brocade is paying $7 million.

Two stories that have been on the back burner for a few weeks attracted a lot of attention at the end of the week.  (1)  The Bancroft family did an about face and announced that it would meet with Rupert Murdoch and consider a sale of Dow Jones; (2) speculation about developments in the Milberg Weiss indictment were in the news, as newspapers reported that one of the Milberg Weiss partners might plead guilty and William Lerach's law firm (neither Lerach nor his firm has been indicted) announced that Lerach might resign.