Planting trees at Yahoo…

They say planting trees shows faith in the future. In corporate suites, the equivalent guesture would be buying stock in your own company.

And behold, Sue Decker, Yahoo’s president is buying stock. And lots of it. In a Form 4 filed Thursday, Decker paid about $1.1 million to buy 47,000 shares on the open market. It’s her first open market purchase since 2001, when as CFO, she bought 10,000 shares for a total of $58,241.

Over her career as an insider at Yahoo, she’s sold about 2.6 million shares to collect $80.7 million, for a net gain of $63.4 million.

But being a bit of a wet blanket, former chief executive and now director Terry Semel made about $1.5 million selling 100,000 shares on the same day.

Yahoo’s stock closed Friday at $23.94 per share, well below its peak this year of $33.61.

Should Google be nervous?

Well

Yet another innovative way to make huge piles of cash at Google…

Remember that ”Transferable Stock Option” program that Google announced last December? Well, apparently it kicked off in April. And in a 10-Q filed on Thursday, the company announced some details about how it worked.

For the three months ending June 30, employees auctioned off 353,593 shares and raised a total of at a total value of $90.7 million, or $256.58 per share. So what does that mean?

Let’s say the strike price for your Google option is $200 and the stock is trading at $500. So really, it’s worth $300 to you, right? Under the TSO program, that employee can use an online tool to auction that option to financial institutions who might be willing to pay that employee more than that $300 spread, essentially betting that the stock will rise even further over time. You get more money now, the bank gets more money later. Maybe.

So in this case, the filing tell us that bidders were on average willing to pay $256.58 for each option, their view of what the spread is worth. It’s also telling us that based on that amount, each option auctioned off by a Google employee brought them $30.25 more per share than they would have gotten if they had just exercised their option and sold it on the market.

Got it? Okay, class dismissed.

Now Palm execs will even be able to afford the iPhone…

Earlier this year, Palm announced a complicated deal where it’s selling part of itselft to Elevation Parners for $325 million and restructuring itself and doing a bunch of corporate-y stuff that will make your eyes roll back into head.

But here’s one thing that won’t tax your brain. In a prospectus filed today asking shareholders to approve whatever it is they want to do, Palm outlined some details of the deal. That includes that current stock will be converted into shares into the new company, plus current shareholders will get $9 for each share they own.

The document also disclosed how much stock current insiders own, and at $9 per share, they’re in line for a sweet payday if shareholders approve the deal. As a group, directors and executives hold 6.979 million shares, which a $9 per share would collect $62,817,138.

The top beneficiaries and their potential payday:

*Eric A. Benhamou, chairman: $5,167,368
*Donna L. Dubinsky, CEO of the original Palm: $16,065,522
*Edward T. Colligan, current president and CEO: $10,617,480

What’s behind curtain number three at Selectica?

Let’s play a guessing game, shall we?
On Thursday, Selectica of San Jose filed an 8-K disclosing that its board had voted earlier this month to raise the salary of its chief financial officer, Bill Roseschlein, to $250,000, though the company didn’t disclose his previous salary. Still, that’s a decent paycheck even in Silicon Valley dollars. He could also get a performance bonus of $62,500.

But more intriguing was this: The company, which helps other companies develop online sales systems, will give him a bonus of $25,000 based on the “successful completion of a particular assignment prior to the close of fiscal year 2008.”

Send in your best guess as to what that “particular assignment” is, and the winner will get, well, the satisfaction of being right.

And by the way, he’s not the only one assigned to the “particular assignment” team. Steve
Goldner, the company’s vice president of engineering, could also get a bonus of $25,000 based on the “successful completion of a particular assignment.”

Moving day for Borland and WJ Communications…

We try not to take it personally, but it seems everyone wants to leave Silicon Valley these days, probably to save a buck or two. But as they say, you have to spend money to save money.

In an 8-K filed Thursday, WJ Communications said its board voted earlier this month to offshore its “final test and support operations” to the Philippines from San Jose. Cost: $600,000 for employee severance and retention, and another $300,000 in start-up costs. And that probably doesn’t even include the cost of getting satellite TV to watch Sabercats games.

Meanwhile, Borland Software, which back in April said it was moving its headquarters from Cupertino to Austin, filed an 8-K Thursday disclosing its moving expenses. Cost: $4.5 million to $5 million in moving and personnel expenses.

Google: Search engine or ATM?…

The Google money machine rolls on. And on. And on.

This week, topping the insider sales list are a couple of familiar faces.

Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt sold 73,934 shares for prices ranging from $505.60 a share to $520.09 a share between July 27 and July 31 to collect $37.9 million.

Director John Doerr sold 58,650 shares for prices ranging from $509.50 to $515.10 a share on Aug. 1 to collect $30 million.

Senior vice president of worldwide sales Omid Kordestani sold 6,000 shares for prices ranging from $509.19 to $514.83 a share to collect $3.1 million.

That should buy eBay a lot of Pez dispensers…

eBay, the San Jose-based on-line auction site, disclosed today that it had reached an agreement with Wells Fargo Bank and Banc of America Securities to extend its credit limit from $1 billion to $2 billion, with an option to increase it to $3 billion.

According to a securities filing today, the company said it may use the funds for a variety of things, including acquisitions. That would be good news for dozens of companies thinking about IPOs that will be put on hold now that the market has gone south for the summer.

Opsware, meet bachelors 1 through 11…

In a series of securities filings today, Opsware provided additional background for its merger with Hewlett-Packard. Among the most interesting revelations is that at one point at least 11 companies expressed interest in buying the data center software company.

Despite all the suitors, the company initially had trouble getting a bid it would consider. Most companies weren’t willing to pay more than $11 a share for the company that was founded by Silicon Valley poster boy Mark Andreessen.

The company pretty much told everyone to forget it, even though it was nervous about the pending public offering by an unnamed competitor (probably BladeLogic). But eventually, companies started knocking on its door again, including HP. Pretty soon, the bidding came down to HP and another company, who bid the price up to $14.25 per share, the final price when the deal was announced on July 23.

Two other interesting notes: While the company was weighing various offers and holding discussions, board members were awarded 25,000 options priced at $9.28 on June 26, the day of the shareholders’ meeting. This included Simon Lorne, William Campbell, Michael Ovitz and Michelangelo Volpi.

But it didn’t include Mike Homer — a board member who resigned on May 21 for “personal reasons.”

Things are going better at Brocade than you realized…

If you’ve been distracted by that pesky trial of a certain former Brocade CEO, then you can be forgiven for not noticing just how great things are going at the company.

“Oh, really?” you ask.

Yes, indeed. Why, just look at the 8-K the company filed today. The company disclosed that on July 30, “following an extensive market comparison of compensation levels at peer companies led by an outside compensation consultant,” the board’s compensation committee approved “certain market adjustments” in the pay of some executives.

Okay, hands up: Who thinks they voted for a pay cut? Wrong!

The committee approved the following raises:

-Michael Klayko, CEO, from $580,000 to $680,000.
-Richard Deranleau, CFO, from $325,000 to $340,000.
-Tejinder (TJ) Grewal, vice president of corporate development, from $290,000 to $315,000.

The company’s stock is just a bit higher than it was a year ago. And it will report third quarter earnings later this month. But it’s second quarter revenue ending in April was $345.3 million, up 89% from $182.7 million for the same quarter one year ago.

Golden parachute of the day…

Looks like today’s winner is Harold Covert, who tendered his resignation at OpenWave this week. In an 8-K filed Thursday, the company disclosed that Covert had resigned as chief financial offer. As parting gifts, he gets $700,000, a year of health and dental insurance, though its less clear from the filing exactly what happens to the remaining stock and options he holds.

The filing also included the company’s earnings for its fourth quarter of fiscaly year 2007, which ended in June. Turns out it was not the best of times for the Redwood City mobile software company. Revenue fell from $396.2 million in 2006, to $290.3 million in 2007.