Put this in your backdating case and smoke it: Nancy Heinen, Apple’s former General Counsel and one of the executives who the SEC was pursuing in regards to the options backdating scandal, has settled the case out of court. She joins former Apple CFO Fred Anderson, who also cut a deal with the SEC last year.
As a result of the settlement, Heinen is not found innocent or guilty of the allegations. She has agreed to pay $2.2 million in fines. Unfortunately, paying it back may require Heinen picking up a part-time job: the settlement also says that she isn’t allowed to be an officer or director of a public company for the next five years, and she can’t practice law before the SEC for three years.
With Heinen’s settlement, we have hope that the options backdating case might finally be over, at least as far as the government is concerned (the DOJ finished their own investigation earlier this year). With any luck, this dark page of Apple’s history is behind us once and for all, and we can move onto something far more concrete. Say, did you hear that Steve Jobs keeps kittens in cages?
