The Associated Press reports that Steve Jobs and other senior executives have settled a stockholder lawsuit claiming they mishandled stock option awards.

Insurers representing Jobs and Apple's board will pay Apple, Inc. $14 million, which tidily covers almost $9 million in attorney's fees and expenses. The settlement puts to rest a series of suits related to Apple's options backdating scandal.

Apple had no comment on the matter.

The settlement and the suit behind it is a little complicated: In a traditional stockholder lawsuit, the stockholders must prove that the stock price was negatively affected by the actions of the defendants. Since accounting problems that follow options-backdating scandals frequently don't affect stock price, the lawsuit is called a "derivative lawsuit."

In a derivative lawsuit, shareholders sue company leaders individually on behalf of the company, claiming they caused harm to the company's interests. The executives settled with Apple and its shareholders, offering the $14 million in exchange for dropping the suit. The money comes from the insurance companies, as the executives had policies in place to cover them in case they had to pay up. Got all that? There's a test at the end.

The settlement received preliminary approval in Federal district court on Monday. A final settlement hearing is scheduled for October 31.

[Via Valleywag.]

In another chapter in the scandal surrounding Apple's choice to back-date options granted to key executives (including Steve Jobs), two plaintiffs have filed a class-action lawsuit in federal court against two former executives and members of Apple's board of directors.

Apple was sued similarly in 2007 by the New York City Employees' Retirement System, and the case was dismissed.

The suit names Steve Jobs, former counsel Nancy Heinen, and board members William Campbell, Millard Drexler, Arthur Levinson, and Jerry York. It contends that the accused intentionally filed false documents, hiding stock option grants to the higher-ups.

Apple, in an internal investigation, cleared Jobs of any wrongdoing, leading many to speculate that the company threw Heinen and former CFO Fred Anderson under the proverbial bus to protect the company's image.

[Via Macworld.]

Well, it looks like the stock options issue that has been pestering Apple for months now may be over. AppleInsider is reporting today that Apple's CFO Fred Anderson has settled with the Securities and Exchange Commission to the tune of three and a half million bucks. Mr. Anderson denies any wrongdoing in the settlement.

Ok, now that all of this is (probably) over, let's re-focus on Leopard, shall we?

Well, it seems that all of this may blow over...at least for Steve and the Pixar execs. Late last year, Pixar, Steve's other company which he sold to Disney, was forced to take another look at some accounting actions. One of the suggested possibilities was that Pixar's John Lasseter was given a backdated stock options bonus. This past Friday, however, Disney announced that all of the accounting in question took place before Disney acquired Pixar, and that no one currently involved with the company "...engaged in any intentional or deliberate acts of misconduct."

We don't know where this will all end up, but it looks like Uncle Steve is off the hook as far as Pixar is concerned.

There's some more news today on the stock options story. According to AppleInsider, it has been suggested that Steve gave Pixar director John Lasseter a questionable, backdated stock option bonus.

I must admit that I haven't really paid much attention to this story, mostly because it's still speculation and hearsay at this point. So we'll see where it goes. For now, though, it's still news.

With the Macworld keynote still on the horizon, the last thing Apple needs is a few more lawsuits and federal investigations.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Apple faces a new shareholder lawsuit along with twin investigations by the San Francisco's US Attorney's office and by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Apple's internal investigation, led by movie star, former Veep and all around green guy Al Gore, cleared Steve Jobs and his executive team. Apparently the lawsuit names about a dozen complaints including backdating stock options and "spring loading", where options are granted in advance of releasing news likely to drive up prices. The bottom line is that this controversy looks like it will be around for a while longer. Is there a "there" there? It's hard to tell. We're not lawyers and this whole thing looks like it rests on lots of technicalities.

Just when you think Apple's financial woes have begun to recede, Forbes.com alerts us to a slew of recently filed class action lawsuits that all have the big fruit in their sights. First up is yet another complaint alleging that Apple has created a monopoly by tying iTS purchases to the iPod and only the iPod. Even though suits like this have come and gone, the court has interestingly denied Apple's motion to dismiss.

Next in line is a suit over the MacBook's iBook G4's "abnormally high rate" of logic board failure. This suit was filed Nov. 7th, and Apple still has time to respond.

A third suit is coming from PhatRat Technology LLC, who is calling patent infringement on the Nike+iPod product. A response from Apple is still pending here as well.

Last (though possibly not least?) is a securities class action suit against the company and "certain current and former officers and directors" over all this backdated stock option grant business.

That's about everything Forbes has on the Apple lawsuit list for now. Think it's still worth it to wish Apple a happy new year?

Apple's ongoing investigation into its stock option grants has delayed its SEC 10-K filing. The filing, which was due yesterday, may be delayed for as much as a month.

If you recall, Apple admitted that employee stock options may have been been backdated. Companies use backdating in order to lower the apparent value of the issued stocks. Although news reports suggest this isn't illegal, the backdating has to be accounted for and disclosed to investors and so forth. CEO Steve Jobs was reportedly aware of the backdating and Apple's investigation is ongoing.

Nancy Heinen, Apple's former general counsel who was just replaced by Donald Rosenberg, has retained a Berkley white collar crime lawyer just in case she needs to defend herself against charges resulting from the whole messy options backdating problem. Heinen abruptly exited her post at Apple last spring with no explanation given and neither Apple nor Heinen has bothered to elaborate on what exactly went down or even whether she was fired or resigned on her own.

Heinen has hired Cristina Arguedas of Arguedas, Cassman & Headley, who said in an interview last week that federal authorities have not contacted Heinen about her possible role in Apple's option grants and Miles Ehrlich, a lawyer at Ramsey & Ehrlich. "Every executive, CEO, CFO, general counsel, any high-up person in Silicon Valley in their right mind is getting themselves legal representation because of this legal environment right now," Arguedas said. "I have a number of clients who are executives who think it would be a good idea to be represented. It doesn't mean anything that they have chosen me to do that."

Fellow TUEWstress Erica Sadun discovered that Cristina Arguedas, aside from being Apple's ex-lawyer's lawyer is go-to-lawyer for lawyers in general, according to the Wall Street Journal law blog. In addition to defending Nancy Heinen, she has also defended legal eagle Ann Baskins, Hewlett Packard general counsel, among others. Is there a special Counsel the Counselors class in law school we wonder?

More than 90 companies are the subject of stock option inquiries right now. The FBI said Wednesday that it's investigating 45 backdating cases, while prosecutors in the past three weeks have charged five former executives of two companies, including two ex-CEOs. Sounds to me like Heinan is very wise to retain counsel at this stage of the game.

I'm no stock market maven, but something tells me this isn't good. It would seem that Apple's internal audits have found some 'irregularities' in the way the company handed out options. It boils down to mispricing, I believe, so that people could avoid paying huge taxes on their options.

Apple has postponed filing with the SEC and may restate earnings going as far back as September 2002. As of this posting it looks like Steve Jobs isn't involved with this, but that still doesn't make the situation a good one. If you want to hear from someone who knows what they are talking about read this post on our sister blog, Blogging Stocks.