Take-Two Interactive said that it received notice from
the SEC that the commission is
conducting an informal investigation in to the company’s stock option grants
going as far back as January ’97. Take-Two interactive also said that it had
initiated an internal investigation into the issues prior to the SEC
notification.
The problem stems from stock option grants given by the
company. The investigation is focusing on the possible mishandling of the stock
option grants by the company alleging that Take-Two may have back dated some
options to dates where the stock was at a lower price to increase its sale
value. According to a CNN Money article
more than 100 other companies may have done the same thing, including CNET.
Take-Two is the parent company of Rockstar Games, the
developer of the popular Grand Theft Auto series. Rockstar created quite a stir
last year after sexually explicit content was found hidden in the code of the
game later accessed by game code hackers. Rockstar originally denied that they
had created the so called “hot coffee” code found in GTA: San Andreas but later
recanted that statement and admitted that their programmers had created the
code.
Shortly after the investigation began, Rockstar released a list of employees that have recently left the company. Rockstar nor Take-Two would comment if the employee departures are related to the SEC probe. The employees are as follows:
- Jamie King (Vice President of Development)
- Jennifer Gross (Director of Marketing)
- Laura Paterson (Director of Marketing)
- Navid Khonsari (Director of Development)
- Jeff Castaneda (Director of Public Relations)
- Chris Carro (Senior Prdocut Manager)
- Corey Wade (Senior Product Manager)
- Todd Zuniga (Public Relations Manager)
- Ryan Rayhill (Public Relations)
- Futaba Hayashi (Senior Web Designer)
