IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/corfin/v15y2009i4p469-487.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Liquidity and employee options: An empirical examination of the Microsoft experience

Author

Listed:
  • Chance, Don M.

Abstract

In recent years several companies have offered employees the opportunity to transfer certain out-of-the-money options to a dealer. This paper examines one such high-profile program offered by Microsoft in 2003. The program was not very transparent in that employees were forced to decide whether to tender their options before knowing how much they would be offered, and it had only a modest rate of participation. Nonetheless, the market easily absorbed intense selling pressure as the options were transferred and hedged. The dealer, JPMorgan Chase, though profiting from the transfer, apparently failed to hedge the volatility risk it accepted from the employees and lost nearly the entire value it paid for the options. The overall experience has important implications for the design of programs that are intended to solve problems of low morale and increased turnover caused by underwater options.

Suggested Citation

  • Chance, Don M., 2009. "Liquidity and employee options: An empirical examination of the Microsoft experience," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 15(4), pages 469-487, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:corfin:v:15:y:2009:i:4:p:469-487
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0929-1199(09)00008-X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Menachem Brenner & Rafi Eldor & Shmuel Hauser, 2001. "The Price of Options Illiquidity," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(2), pages 789-805, April.
    2. Chip Heath & Steven Huddart & Mark Lang, 1999. "Psychological Factors and Stock Option Exercise," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(2), pages 601-627.
    3. Detemple, Jerome & Sundaresan, Suresh, 1999. "Nontraded Asset Valuation with Portfolio Constraints: A Binomial Approach," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 12(4), pages 835-872.
    4. Oyer, Paul & Schaefer, Scott, 2005. "Why do some firms give stock options to all employees?: An empirical examination of alternative theories," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(1), pages 99-133, April.
    5. Carter, Mary Ellen & Lynch, Luann J., 2004. "The effect of stock option repricing on employee turnover," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 91-112, February.
    6. Core, John E. & Guay, Wayne R., 2001. "Stock option plans for non-executive employees," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(2), pages 253-287, August.
    7. Carpenter, Jennifer N., 1998. "The exercise and valuation of executive stock options," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(2), pages 127-158, May.
    8. Huddart, Steven & Lang, Mark, 1996. "Employee stock option exercises an empirical analysis," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 5-43, February.
    9. Huddart, Steven, 1994. "Employee stock options," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 207-231, September.
    10. Lambert, Ra & Larcker, Df & Verrecchia, Re, 1991. "Portfolio Considerations In Valuing Executive-Compensation," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(1), pages 129-149.
    11. Holland, Larry C. & Elder, Erick M., 2006. "Employee stock options in compensation agreements: A financing explanation," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 12(2), pages 367-379, January.
    12. Brian J. Hall, 2004. "Transferable Stock Options (Tsos) And The Coming Revolution In Equity‐Based Pay," Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, Morgan Stanley, vol. 16(1), pages 8-17, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Aktas, Nihat & de Bodt, Eric & Roll, Richard, 2013. "MicroHoo: Deal failure, industry rivalry, and sources of overbidding," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 19(C), pages 20-35.
    2. Carole Bernard & Olivier Le Courtois, 2012. "Performance Regularity: A New Class of Executive Compensation Packages," Asia-Pacific Financial Markets, Springer;Japanese Association of Financial Economics and Engineering, vol. 19(4), pages 353-370, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sautner, Zacharias & Weber, Martin, 2005. "Stock options and employee behavior," Papers 05-26, Sonderforschungsbreich 504.
    2. Grasselli, Matheus & Henderson, Vicky, 2009. "Risk aversion and block exercise of executive stock options," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 109-127, January.
    3. Brian J. Hall & Thomas A. Knox, 2002. "Managing Option Fragility," NBER Working Papers 9059, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Sautner, Zacharias & Weber, Martin, 2005. "Subjective stock option values and exercise decisions : determinants and consistency," Papers 05-31, Sonderforschungsbreich 504.
    5. Lim, Terence & Lo, Andrew W. & Merton, Robert C. & Scholes, Myron S., 2006. "The Derivatives Sourcebook," Foundations and Trends(R) in Finance, now publishers, vol. 1(5–6), pages 365-572, April.
    6. Kevin F. Hallock & Craig A. Olson, 2010. "New Data for Answering Old Questions Regarding Employee Stock Options," NBER Chapters, in: Labor in the New Economy, pages 149-180, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. repec:dau:papers:123456789/9550 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Hall, Brian J. & Murphy, Kevin J., 2002. "Stock options for undiversified executives," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 3-42, February.
    9. Hamza Bahaji, 2009. "Contribution à l'analyse des déterminants du comportement d'exercice des porteurs de stock options : une étude empirique sur le marché Américain," Working Papers halshs-00512840, HAL.
    10. Kevin F. Hallock & Craig Olson, 2006. "The Value of Stock Options to Non-Executive Employees," NBER Working Papers 11950, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Chang, Charles & Fuh, Cheng-Der & Hsu, Ya-Hui, 2008. "ESO compensation: The roles of default risk, employee sentiment, and insider information," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 14(5), pages 630-641, December.
    12. repec:dau:papers:123456789/13098 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Hodder, James E. & Jackwerth, Jens Carsten, 2011. "Managerial responses to incentives: Control of firm risk, derivative pricing implications, and outside wealth management," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(6), pages 1507-1518, June.
    14. Menachem Abudy & Simon Benninga, 2011. "Taxation and the value of employee stock options," International Journal of Managerial Finance, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 7(1), pages 9-37, February.
    15. Jin, Li & Kothari, S.P., 2008. "Effect of personal taxes on managers' decisions to sell their stock," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 23-46, September.
    16. Hamza Bahaji, 2018. "Are employee stock option exercise decisions better explained through the prospect theory?," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 262(2), pages 335-359, March.
    17. Peter Cappelli & Martin Conyon & David Almeda, 2020. "Social Exchange and the Effects of Employee Stock Options," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 73(1), pages 124-152, January.
    18. Brian J. Hall & Thomas A. Knox, 2004. "Underwater Options and the Dynamics of Executive Pay‐to‐Performance Sensitivities," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(2), pages 365-412, May.
    19. Sircar, Ronnie & Xiong, Wei, 2007. "A general framework for evaluating executive stock options," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 31(7), pages 2317-2349, July.
    20. Bettis, J. Carr & Bizjak, John M. & Lemmon, Michael L., 2005. "Exercise behavior, valuation, and the incentive effects of employee stock options," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(2), pages 445-470, May.
    21. Carpenter, Jennifer N. & Stanton, Richard & Wallace, Nancy, 2010. "Optimal exercise of executive stock options and implications for firm cost," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 98(2), pages 315-337, November.
    22. Zacharias Sautner & Martin Weber, 2009. "How Do Managers Behave In Stock Option Plans? Clinical Evidence From Exercise And Survey Data," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 32(2), pages 123-155, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:corfin:v:15:y:2009:i:4:p:469-487. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jcorpfin .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.