However, were there to be a program of buying or selling stock put in place by the insider prior to the material non-public event the insider would still be allowed to continue that program without modification until the public event was announced.

As such we see that the new hires were granted stock options at prices that do not reflect (hopefully) non-public information and likewise it is possible that this interpretation/opinion of the exception to teh insider trader restrictions are adopted too by the company that could argue that it had a previously announced program to purchase stock when and if it hit a predertimed price and stop when the stock hit a predertemined upper limit.

of course the possibility of other side of the coin exists that here ain't no material non-public info to dislcose but that wouldn't be fun now would it, So let's keep dreaming until the PR wakes us up!!!