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.”

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.

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.

That will buy a lot of video games…

Video game developers have been trying to get their business growing again. That’s true even for industry giants like Electronics Arts of Redwood City. The company has recently undergone an executive shake-up. And the latest move was disclosed Tuesday in an 8-k filing.

EA managed to lure Peter Moore away from Microsoft where he was leading the XBOX and Games for Windows business. At EA, he’ll be president of EA SPORTS, which handles big titles like Maden NFL and Tiger Woods PGA.  But he comes with a hefty price tag:

* A $550,000 salary, which will make him better paid than many Valley CEOs.

* A $1.5 million bonus that he would have to repay of he leaves within 2 years.

*350,000 stock options and 50,000 restricted stock units.

 *About $330,000 in relocation expenses.

 Oh, and since bonuses are set in March, the company is throwing in this little extra to sweeten the deal:

While normally the bonus would be prorated for your months of employment, we are making an exception to this policy and you will be eligible for your full target bonus without pro-ration.

More good news for Atmel employees…

If you haven’t been following the saga at Atmel, the San Jose maker of chips for mobile phones and DVD players, here’s a quick recap. Option backdating scandal. Lots of restatements. CEO fired last year over allegation he misused travel funds. CEO tried and failed to takeover company in messy proxy fight. Company subpoenaed over options boo-boos.

The restatements nicked $94 million off the bottom line. And the company spent $9 million on all the internal investigations last year. It expects to spend between $5 million to $7 million this year. And the meter is still running thanks to outstanding investigations by various federal agencies.

 So, there probably weren’t a lot of smiles at the company Fourth of July party. But the kicker came Monday when Atmel finally filed its overdue proxy on Monday. See, there are still some employees who are holding options that were backdated. Or, as the Atmel proxy calls them, “Eligible Discount Options.” Atmel has a plan for dealing with these options that it wants shareholders to approve at its annual meeting on July 25.

If approved, the amendment would give employees a couple choices. If they exercised options last year, they can amend the exercise prices to what it should have been in the first place. In other words, pay more for those options. If they haven’t exercised them, they can either select a day in the future when they will exercise them or they can change the exercise price to what it should have been.

So what’s the good news? Apparently the IRS would assess a big tax penalty if the adjustments aren’t made. So the company says this should help the employees avoid that charge.

If that bums out some employees at Atmel, then maybe this will cheer them up. The proxy includes the bonuses that eligible insiders got last year.

Top three bonuses:
Steve Laub, president and CEO: $395,996
Robert Avery, Vice President Finance and Chief Financial Officer: $278,907
Tsung-Ching Wu, Executive Vice President, Office of the President : $ 280,157

During 2005, Atmel’s stock almost doubled, to $6.05 per share. On Monday, the stock closed at $5.75.