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.

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.  

Cnet and SEC go “formal”…

I posted a story early on Tuesday morning on Cnet disclosing that the SEC  had elevated its options probe from “informal” to “formal.” The company also revealed that some number of unnamed former executives had been subpoenaed. This apparently happened in May, but it was just disclosed Tuesday in a 10-Q filed by Cnet, way way way down in the filing.

How far down? Apparently some folks at the company didn’t know about it, and neither did their outside PR agency. A flak reached me mid-morning to insist the story was wrong and that all this had happened in 2006. In fact, the original federal probe started in 2006. But this new development happened in May 2007, I was quite sure, I told her. I was on my way into the office, and when I got in, I emailed her the portion of the 10-Q with the relevant information.

A tin parachute from Exar…

Normally, when executives depart from a Valley company, we wait for the dislosure of a generous severance package.

But it seems that John Herzing the now former vice president of world wide sales at Exar Corporation of Fremont, did not have such good fortune. In an 8-K filed on Wednesday, the company dislosed its severance agreement and that he had resigned immediately. The terms? He gets 12 weeks of pay, worth about $55,385, which he’ll have to pay taxes on. And the company will pay COBRA for three months.

In other words, he’s getting just about what any Valley cubicle dweller might expect to get. Maybe he can use the time off to work on his negotiating skills.

The other co-director drops at Thomas Weisel…

In May, Thomas Weisel Partners lost Blake Jorgenson, a co-director of its investment banking business, when he joined Yahoo as chief financial officer.

Yesterday, in a filing with the SEC that included the release of its second quarter earnings, the Thomas Weisel slipped in news that Robert Kitts, the remaining co-director who was promoted to chief executive of the unit when Jorgenson left, will leave before the year is out, “to pursue other opportunities.” No word on who will replace him, or whether the company will take a Thing One and Thing Two approach.

The San Francisco investment bank that went public in 2006 reported second quarter results
after the market closed Tuesday that beat expectations. Its shares traded up about 42 cents
or 3 percent after hours, almost making up for the 51 cents the stock fell during regular trading.
Revenues for the quarter were up 13 percent from the year before to $71.7 million, while
profits nearly doubled.

Most of the growth was contributed by the firm’s asset management unit, where revenue grew 165
percent to $14.3 million. The increases were driven by private equity gains of $9.9 million in
the second quarter of 2007.

The investment banking unit under Kitts’ supervision saw sales rise 5 percent. Hmmm. Well, we hear Yahoo’s hiring…. 

Hi, you don’t know me, but could you please sell your company?

According to a Schedule 13-D filed on Monday, Packeteer chief executive David Cote got a call on Monday from Robert L. Chapman, of Chapman Capital, a private investment firm based in El Segundo, CA.

Chapman wanted to pass along some news. First, Chapman has spent about $25 million over the past month or so to buy about 9.9 percent of Packeteer’s stock. And second, he wants Packeteer to “hire an investment bank to maximize shareholder value.” 

Cote “refused to return Mr. Chapman’s telephone call,” according to the filing.

So, Chapman contacted Packeteer’s chief financial officer, David C. Yntema. And wouldn’t you know, Yntema “refused to record a written message for Mr. Cote regarding Chapman Capital’s demand that the Issuer hire an investment bank to maximize shareholder value” to even give Cote a message all.

The nerve!

Even better: “Mr. Yntema stated that Mr. Cote would not be returning Mr. Chapman’s telephone call at any time in the future.”

Take that!

So, then Chapman contacted Packeteer’s chairman Steven J. Campbell, who “refused to provide his E-mail address to allow Chapman Capital to provide, unilaterally and thus completely outside the venue of Regulation FD, information to the Issuer’s Board of Directors such as that within the forthcoming Original 13D Filing.”

And then:

“Following Mr. Chapman’s conveyance of Chapman Capital’s demand regarding the maximization of shareholder value, the conversation between Mr. Chapman and Mr. Campbell terminated abruptly.”

Click.

Packeteer’s stock has fallen by about half since the start of the year, closing at $7.19 per share.

Speaking of bonuses…

The ones at Intuit, the Mountain View financial software company, are coming at Internet speed. Their fiscal year ended today, but the board has already voted to award bonuses based on performances, which the rest of us won’t know about until earnings are reported next month.

But apparently, they were pretty darn good. On Monday, the company disclosed in an 8-K that it will pay out $101 million in employee bonuses. A year ago, the company had about 7,500 employees, which works out to about $13,500 per working stiff. Though we presume some workers were more equal than others.

That figure doesn’t include executive bonuses:

Stephen Bennett, president and CEO: $3.25 milion.

William Campbell, chairman: $600,000.

Scott Cook, chairman of the executive committee: $400,000.

Brad Henske, former vice president, consumer tax group: $720,000.

Richard William Ihrie, senior vice president, small business product development: $450,000.

Kiran M. Patel, senior vice president, consumer tax group: $683,000.

Brad Smith, senior vice president, small business division: $765,000.

The fat lady hasn’t sung yet, but…

CV Therapeutics, the biopharmaceutical company based in Palo Alto, disclosed in an 8-K filed on Monday that it had hired an investment banker to advise “the company on a range of strategic opportunities.”

The magic man in this case is Frederick Frank, vice chairman of Lehman Brothers. According to a press release and the filing, “Mr. Frank has advised a range of notable biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies and has been involved in hundreds of transactions in the health care field over the past 48 years.”

CV’s primary product is Ranexa, which is used to treat chronic angina. The company potentially has a second compound that may be approved for use in 2008.

In a statement, Frank was quoted as saying: ”I am looking forward to helping the company build value for these assets.”

Of course, this doesn’t necessarily mean that CV could put itself up for sale. But these things have a way of gathering momentum on their own.

And, of course, the company lost $57.6 million in the quarter ending in June on $25.4 million in revenue, which isn’t the healthiest of ratios. But the stock, which was trading at $11.25 on Monday afternoon, is only down slightly over the past year.