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The Google Blog informed us about a new program they are offering employees to offer more "competitive compensation packages" and keep good employees around. They are enabling employees with stock options in GOOG to "transfer (sell) their options to a financial institution through a competitive bidding process." Meaning, they can trade their options, almost like they would a normal stock, which is commonly not done with stock options.
With the TSO program, employees will also be able to sell vested options to the highest-bidding financial institution, which may be willing to pay a premium above the difference between the exercise price and the market price for Google stock (even when the exercise price is higher than the market price).
More details on this Google TOS program at the following PDF documents:
Very creative, indeed.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
