Today’s top links (July 10, 2006)

Academic rocks corporate America by revealing boardroom reward ploys
Erik Lie, a professor at the Henry B Tippie college of business in Iowa City, is credited with triggering a scandal over share options which has so far snared more than 60 companies - including Apple, Microsoft and the world’s largest DIY retailer, Home Depot.

Fuzzy annual reports hide woes
A recent study by Feng Li, an assistant professor of accounting at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, suggests that annual reports of firms with lower earnings are harder to read — on purpose. The full study can be downloaded from SRN.

Do Links Need Underlines?
Many people who use the web for a long time start to become conditioned to look for underlines. If you watch them with an eye tracker, you can see their focus dart from underlined-text to underlined-text when they first see a page.

SEC Commissioner Atkins Warns of Overreaction in Options Furor
Not only would it be difficult to prove that a board awarded options in anticipation of good news, he said, there may also be good reasons for a board to do so. Shareholders, he argued, benefit from the practice of granting well-timed stock options, because they may allow the company to spend less cash on salaries.

How a Computer Knows What Many Investment Managers Don’t
Many mutual funds that make their trades based on the recommendations of a proprietary computer model, known as quantitative or quant funds, have outperformed their benchmarks in the last three years. And investors have noticed.

Related posts:

1. Did e-proxy figure in Apple’s surprise say-on-pay loss?
2. Most popular posts in February
3. Earnings releases — the Warren Buffett way
4. SEC outlines 2008 Web initiatives
5. Footnote links improve financial statement usability

Please Support Our Work
Email your friends about us. Subscribe to our paid publication Online IR Trends Quarterly. Get us to recommend improvements to your IR website (we're really good at it).