The time is right

In the wake of scandals, many firms have attempted to alter the process of granting stock options to not draw scrutiny. One such attempt to dodge options backdating was to give out stock options on a yearly schedule. Robert Daines, Grant Richard McQueen and Robert J Schonlau found that several CEOs managed to still affect the strike price of the stocks by fiddling with announcements and timings, as they knew the dates the grants would be released.