As practices surrounding the timing of options grants for public companies came under increased scrutiny in early 2006, Merrill Lynch analyzed the timing of stock option grants from 1997 to 2002 for the semiconductor and semiconductor equipment companies that comprise the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index. It revealed that backdated options—

a common practice before Sarbanes-Oxley was implemented in 2002—often yielded higher returns, a result that spawned numbers of shareholder derivative suits. By 2007, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was investigating more than 160 companies involved in stock options backdating.

Internet Assignment: Read any one of those suits and find out if the shareholders won. If not, why not?