It is also rumored that a number of senior executive were recently fired and that they too will lose their stock options. At least one former employee appears to have lost his stock options this way. So if you had a vested option to buy 100 shares at $1 each, and the shares were now worth $100 each, the investors could buy back your stock options at $1 per share, wiping out any value you had gained in the stock options. There was a provision in the investor stock option plan that allowed the investors to buy back the vested stock options of former employees of Skype at the stock election price. The company-wide stock option plan in turn was subject to the terms of an investor stock plan. That agreement was subject to the terms of the standard company-wide Stock Option Agreement. As best I can tell many employees of Skype had the right to purchase shares of Skype in accordance with a stock option agreement.
It was rumored that one or several senior executives of Skype lost their stock options when Skype agreed to be acquired by Microsoft earlier this summer.
But there are many other potential problems with stock options as well. There is the obvious problem that the stock in the company may never be worth anything. You may count on your stock options as a possible way to make you rich some day, but you should be very careful if you are counting on them to be part of a reasonable compensation package. Founders of startups and senior executives who join startups often place too much value on their stock options.
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