Bid Rigging

  

Bid rigging is the illegal practice of predetermining who will win a the contract to build a project. It's a form of collusion that allows contractors to extract higher prices than they might otherwise get in a truly competitive bidding environment.

If you've ever seen The Sopranos, bid rigging comes up a lot. In that case, it works like this: supposedly rival companies get together and decide who will submit the winning bid for a contract. Instead of competing to see who can present the lowest possible price, companies predetermine a price they are looking to make. One company (say, Tony Soprano's Barone Sanitation) then submits the predetermined winning bid amount. The other companies (like Johnny Sack's Cinelli Sanitation) submit higher bids, ensuring that the "low" bid wins the contract.

The companies might take turns securing contracts that way, assuring that prices stay high (basically acting as a monopolistic cabal). Or the other companies in the scheme might receive a payoff from the company winning the bid.

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Finance: What is Backdating?5 Views

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Finance a la shmoop... what is back dating? ooh this is bad

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scandals, jail, Silicon Valley soap opera when an important employee is hired by a [Employee stood beside a start up company]

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young company they might get a generous option plan for a company stock in a

00:16

more modest salary and bonus plan why because young companies don't have a lot

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of cash today but want to attract good workers and they're betting on the fact

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that employees will be tempted by the possibility of making millions from

00:29

those options well there are usually some limits with the options for example

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the employee might have to stay in good standing at the company for four years

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and they must sell their options within ten years or so of them being granted so [Conditions for new employees]

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far so good but these options must also come with a strike price which is the

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price at which the employee can buy the stock and that's where things get sticky

00:49

here with backdating well how is the strike price created well if a company's

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already publicly traded and them options are being granted that strike price is [Company handing out stock to public]

00:59

usually derived by looking at the average closing price over the last 120

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days or so of trading or something like that some shady companies and employees

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realize that they could backdate their options which means slapping on a price

01:14

from a date a few days a few weeks or a few months earlier when prices were way

01:19

lower so instead of a strike price of like 20 bucks they might have a strike [Strike price comes down on a chart]

01:24

price of like only 15 and have five free dollars of market ride on everyone

01:29

else's nickel getting that lower price by fudging a few dates means bigger

01:33

potential profits for the employees who will eventually then sell their stock [Pile of cash falling]

01:37

and take the gain from whatever it sells for down to whatever the strike price

01:41

was that they paid there's just one tiny problem with all this back dating is

01:45

illegal in 2008-9 though it didn't prevent some big back dating scandals in

01:51

Silicon Valley and put a few people in jail and since then laws have gotten a [Man behind bars and judge bangs gavel]

01:56

whole lot stricter.... yachts n things stock was at 80 bucks a share 20 weeks

02:03

ago now it's at 200 in four years it might be four hundred least that's what

02:08

Morgan Stanley says it'll be the employee getting the $80 strike price on

02:12

a hundred thousand shares will have appreciated $320 per share

02:16

times 100,000 shares or 32 million dollars worth of appreciation that's a

02:20

whole lot of appreciation but if the employee had received as their strike

02:24

price the average of 280 those are the stock prices assuming an arithmetic set [Strike price highlighted]

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of closing price gains well then the strike price on their options would have

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been a hundred and forty not 80 the gain would then be only an appreciation of

02:40

$260 not 320 it's a big difference when you multiply it by a hundred thousand

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right so yeah you don't want to miss out on that extra six million that's like a

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dozen of these bad boys [Yachts in a harbor]

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