The long and winding road to a big Apple stock sale…

On Monday, Apple director William Campbell spent $690,000 to exercise 120,000 options at $5.75 per share. He sold all those shares for $17,357,271 for a net gain of $16,667,271, according to a series of Form 4s he filed on Wednesday. Thank you iPhone!

What’s interesting is the date of Campbell’s last stock sale as an insider: January 23, 1987. This is practically pre-historic times by Valley standards. Campbell originally was hired at Apple in 1983 but left late in the decade. He was chief executive of Intuit from 1994 to 1998.

Campbell joined the Apple board in 1997 when Steve Jobs returned from the wilderness. But Wednesday marked his first big Apple-related pay day, though we doubt he’s been suffering financially. Also, he still holds 253,015 shares.

And by the way, Campbell wasn’t the only Apple insider busy selling this week. Chief financial officer Peter Oppenheimer sold 135,625 shares on Monday at $144.28 per share to collect $19,567,975. That will sit nicely with the $73.4 million in stock he’s sold since 2002.

Both men were selling under terms of prearranged stocks sales plans known as a 10b5-1 that they filed in January.

We’ve got good news, and we’ve got bad news

Here’s the good news at Coherent of Santa Clara in an 8-K filed on Thursday. A Special Committe has been studying options granted over the past decade and concluded:

that there was no intentional wrongdoing by the Company’s current directors, its Chief Executive Officer, John Ambroseo, or its Chief Financial Officer, Helene Simonet.

Here’s the bad news. The Special Committe and management have:

determined that incorrect measurement dates for a significant number of stock option awards during the Relevant Period were used.

No word yet on how many, how much, or how big the restatements will be.

In case you haven’t heard, there’s an options backdating scandal going on…

Here’s a goof you probably don’t want your company to make these days: Putting the wrong option grant date on the Form 4 disclosing the award of stock options. Especially when it’s your directors.

Apparently, Yahoo’s fact checkers missed that memo. On Wednesday the company filed eight amendments to a series of Form 4s filed in June disclosing options that were awarded to its board members following the company’s annual meeting.

The original filings listed the grant date as June 13 and the strike price as $27.38. But according to the amendments, the real grant date should have been June 12. A footnote in the forms said this was “due to an administrative error.”

Fortunately, every cloud has a silver lining. The change in grant dates meant the strike price was only $27.05, down 33 cents.

The Oracle Machine…

Maybe Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison should spend more time on his dingy.

While the software chieftain was busy not winning the America’s Cup race for much of the spring, his little software start-up in Redwood Shores has been setting a blistering pace in 2007. On June 26, Oracle reported that revenue for the fiscal year 2007 that ended in May rose 25 percent over 2006. That’s in part been driven by a frantic pace of acquisition, which continued on Wednesday when the company announced the purchase of Santa Clara-based Bharosa on Wednesday for an undisclosed sum. The company’s stock has risen 20.2 percent this year, to close at $20.60 per share on Thursday.

In Silicon Valley, there’s only one way to celebrate that kind of winning streak: Sell your stock.

So far in 2007, Oracle insiders have sold $168.4 million worth of stock, a figure that includes a $61.9 million sale made by Ellison back in January.

But this week, executive chairman Jeff Henley tops our sales list. On June 28, Henley paid $5.8 million to exercise 1 million shares at prices ranging from $4.18 to $6.88 per share. Henley sold all that stock the same day for $20 per share, for a net gain of $14.2 million.

During more than 15 years as an Oracle insider, Henley has now sold a total of $429 million worth of Oracle stock.

Another stay of execution…

…er, delisting.

Maxim Integrated Products, the Sunnyvale chip maker, convinced a Nasdaq panel to review a previous delisting decision and stay an order to delist. The 8-K filed on Wednesday didn’t way when a decision is expected.

Meanwhile, Maxim is still trying to sort out its own possible options backdating issues so it can file delinquent earnings reports.

Welcome to the (possible options backdating) club

Meet the newest member of the team: Lam Research of Fremont.

According to an 8-K filed on Wednesday by the semiconductor equipment company:

Lam Research Corporation (“Lam” or the “Company”) has commenced a voluntary internal review of the accounting and reporting related to Company grants of employee stock options and the procedures under which those grants were made. Questions have arisen as to whether the appropriate accounting measurement dates for certain employee stock option grants between 1999 and 2002 were selected.

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.