Amnon Landan quits
Mercury stocks plummet after CEO quits
Software giant’s CEO, other senior officials resign over stock option irregularities
Israeli software giant Mercury Interactive saw its stocks plummet by 27 percent in trade on Nasdaq, to a level of USD 25.66, after the company’s CEO resigned over stock option irregularities.
Amnon Landan and other senior official resigned after an internal investigative committee found that the former CEO received a USD 1 million loan from mercury without authorization. Landan later paid back the loan.
The committee was appointed in June 2005 in order to look into stock-option irregularities and charges of false reports regarding dates where stock options were issued.
The committee found that since 1996 there have been 49 cases where the date of providing stock options was different than what was reported by the company.
Meanwhile, Mercury announced that it ended the third quarter with revenues of USD 205-210 million. However, due to the dramatic developments, the company said it would not be publishing its financial reports on time.
Mercury said it expected the fourth quarter of this year to be challenging and is unable to provide forecasts at this time.
