corporate intrigue

[mamajoan]

Last Friday when I got home from work I found a thick (like, one-inch-thick) sheaf of papers awaiting me. From my former employer. I was expecting it, because a couple of people I worked with there are coworkers now at my current job and had told me what it was about.

(Longtime followers of this journal may recall that I got fired from my previous job because, basically, my boss found this journal and read some uncomplimentary things that I said here about the job and the company. Which is why I now post everything job-related in friends-locked posts.)

When I left that job I exercised my stock options to the tune of approx. $900, which got me approx. 6000 shares at approx. 25¢ each (I haven't found all the paperwork yet, can't remember the exact numbers). So this package was to inform me, as a stockholder, that the company is being acquired, and the new parent company is buying back all the outstanding shares at 34¢ each. Woo!

Some folks from that company are sad, because they had high hopes of the company going public and the shares being worth like $10 each, like enough to retire on. Me, I'm just happy to get my $900 back, which I never thought I'd see again! Anything above and beyond that is icing!

Of course, there will be tax implications, the likes of which make my head hurt to think about, but I probably won't have to worry about that for quite a while, because according to the paperwork the buyback will begin six months after the acquisition is complete, which will be Nov. 1st. So I probably won't see any money till well after tax day in '05, so I can worry about it for tax day '06.

Anyway, it's all very exciting, but there's no way in hell I'm reading all that paperwork. Yeesh! An inch thick, people!

Comments

[hawkeye7.livejournal.com]

I've worked for three companies with three different stock schemes and have yet to see so much as a penny! Well done!

[retch.livejournal.com]

the tax is super easy, and since you'll have held them over a year, they get taxed as long term capital gains, so you pay a low tax rate. (see Bush does give yah love. ;P )