jnycat:

Without doing any research I am assuming that you are implying that the company has given almost $2 million to various employees in the form of stock options which would appear to you to be a raid on the company's treasury by insiders. This is a popular conception of stock options on bulletin boards but it seems to me that the practice is badly misunderstood. If an individual exercises an option they must pay for the shares at the option price, so if the ECU employees do that "almost $2 million" flows into the company treasury, not the reverse. It is true that the employee would enjoy the financial benefit of any appreciation in the share price above the cost of acquisition but that is precisely the objective of the concept - to motivate employees to do everything ethically possible to increase the company's value in the eyes of potential investors. That objective is obviously one you share with them so lets hope they do very well indeed from the exercise of their options. The only theoretical loss to the company would be some dilution of the outstanding shares and the theoretical opportunity cost of selling at the option price instead of the higher market price.