SAN FRANCISCO — No timetable has been set for Altera Corp.'s investigation of its internal stock options granting procedures from 1996 to 2000, according to John Daane, president, chairman and CEO of the programmable logic supplier.

In an exclusive interview with EE Times Wednesday (May 10), Daane emphasized that no determination of wrong doing by Altera or any employee of the company has been made. He also said that the company has not suggested that its concerns about historical stock options granting procedures for 1996 through 2000 are related to options backdating, as had been widely assumed. But Daane declined to discuss the specific areas of concern.

Daane, who joined Altera in December 2000 after 15 years with LSI Logic Corp., said he met with Katherine Schuelke, Altera's corporate counsel since 2001, to discuss the company's historical stock options granting procedures in light of recent management shakeups at Vitesse Semiconductor Corp., Power Integrations Inc. and other companies, which originated from concern about stock options granting practices. The Wall Street Journal first introduced this controversy in a March 18 article that cast doubt about the procedures at several companies. The article did not include Altera.

"We came together and said, gee, we should probably look at this," Daane said of his meeting with Schuelke, which took place last week.

Altera subsequently issued a public statement Monday saying it had established a special committee of independent directors to review the company's stock option practices from 1996 to 2000. Altera also said it would delay the filing of its latest quarterly report, pending the investigation.

Daane did not say what specifically caused the company to take this step. When asked about a timetable, Daane said the independent directors would be given sufficient time to do a complete investigation.

The Wall Street Journal's March 18 analysis found a disproportionate number of cases where companies had issued stock options to employees just before a sharp rise in the company's stock. The more a stock rises following the issuance of a stock option, the greater the profit to the option holder. Stock options are supposed to be issued at pre-determined times independent of the stock's current value.

In addition to Vitesse, which last month suspended three executives including CEO Louis Tomasetta pending an investigation into its stock option granting procedures, and Power Integrations, which witnessed the abrupt resignations of its chairman and its chief financial officer due, apparently, to its internal stock option granting investigation, fab-automation equipment specialist Brooks Automation, contract design and manufacturing group Jabil Circuit Inc., as well as several other companies, have been touched by the controversy.