Here's a blog post pointing to a WSJ article that says that when the markets reopened after 9/11 some companies gave their executives option grants. Now in and of itself that's not a problem, but this is. See after 9/11 the market fell a lot, 14% over 5 days. The value of options for a public company is based on the current price. If the current price is low, the option costs less. Since the option can last for years, if the price climbs big profits result.
The WSJ found that many companies that don't normally issue options in September did so in 2001 and that the "grants were concentrated around Sept. 21, when the market reached its post-attack low". 511 top executives at 186 companies (including Home Depot, Merrill Lynch, and T. Rowe Price) got option grants in the second half of September 2001. The disgusting part is that these folks could have bought stock on the open market at depressed prices which would have helped bolster the market and the economy. "In 1929, when the stock market crashed, JP Morgan (and others) stepped in. They bought stock with their own dollars, they saved Wall Street." Instead these guys were just greedy.
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