But not necessarily the ones you might think. Oh yes, plaintiff attorneys are lining up to get a shot at running class action cases relating to options schenenhigans, but there's a whole other group of folks who make their living in America's least respected profession who've made out like bandits on the same issue - corporate governance specialists who help their clients negotiate the intricacies of complying options related regs:

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice each are investigating alleged stock option backdating at dozens of U.S. companies, with the SEC probing securities filings at more than 80 U.S. corporations.

With federal prosecutors and SEC investigators breathing down their necks, Texas corporations are hiring defense firms, and plaintiffs firms are beginning to file shareholder derivative or class-action suits related to alleged option backdating at Texas companies.

"This all heated up for us in June of this year," says Charlie Parker, a securities litigation partner in Locke Liddell & Sapp in Houston. "It's kind of become a rather large source of work for many lawyers," says Michael Gold, a corporate partner in Baker Botts in Washington, D.C. The work, Gold says, cuts across many practice areas.

"This is the kind of issue that kind of crosses a whole lot of legal and accounting ... issues. You have tax issues embedded in this. You have employee compensation issues embedded in this. You have corporate governance issues at the heart of this," Gold says. "In the purest, worst form, if the alleged conduct is true, it is fraud where there was a bad intent."

Lots more at Law.com.

-- MDT

Labels: Department of Justice