The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) is expected to announce on Thursday a rule requiring companies to treat stock options as expenses. At TechCentralStation, John Berlau discusses the prospects for a congressional overturn.

It is doubtful that such an overturn will happen, largely because the tech industry thinks it is playing pattycake, arguing over arcane financial issues, while its opponents are playing Rollerball, an all-out fight over wealth and power. As I wrote a few months ago:

[T]he tech companies seem to have misunderstood the nature of the fight. They assume it is really about accounting, and that if only they explain often enough that treating options as expenses will not in fact help investors then their opponents will relent.

Sorry, guys. The pro-expense 'em forces do not care about helping investors; they care about discouraging stock options.

In the modern corporation, intangible assets now constitute 70% or so of the value of the company, a shift from 25 years ago, when 75% of the value was in tangible assets. By using options, companies make the creators of these intangible assets into owners, and venture capitalists make the creative classes into partners. Options are a complicated, but quite creative, solution to a number of difficult problems in the valuation of intellect-based assets.

The idea of making the creative classes into owners is not welcomed by old line capitalists, organized labor, public employees, and other power centers. Hence the fight to discourage options.

If you think this view is paranoid, read the whole argument, which appeared in the Milken Institute Review (the deep link is here), along with an earlier background paper.

Stock Options
Tech Workers of the World, Unite!
Stock Options & the Creative Classes
IP as Capital: Yoda Speaks

posted by James DeLong @ 11:25 AM | General

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