The United States Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday charged former executives at Deutsche Telekom’s Magyar Telekom unit with bribery and violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The federal agency said three Magyar Telekom executives paid off Macedonian government officials as much as $6.29 million during 2005 and 2006 for “regulatory benefits” and to muscle one of its competitors out of the Macedonian wireless market, Reuters reported. The SEC also accused the executives of trying to pay off consultants and government officials in Montenegro with as much as $9.47 million to receive a government blessing for a planned Magyar Telekom acquisition. The Magyar Telekom executives named in the SEC filing are former CEO Elek Straub and “strategy executives” Tamas Morvai and Andras Balogh.

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The United States Justice Department has issued a request for more information from Google and Motorola Mobility concerning the search giant’s planned $12.5 billion acquisition of the phone maker. Google senior vice president Dennis Woodside explained that his company is still confident the deal will be approved. “We believe very strongly this is a pro-competitive transaction that is good for Motorola Mobility, good for consumers, and good for our partners,” he said, noting the “second request” form the DOJ was routine. “While this means we won’t be closing right away, we’re confident that the DOJ will conclude that the rapidly growing mobile ecosystem will remain highly competitive after this deal closes. We’ll be working closely and cooperatively with them as they continue their review.” Google announced in August that it intends to purchase Motorola Mobility and, shortly after, CEO Larry Page noted that Motorola’s patent portfolio will help Google’s Android partners against competitors. Despite public statements in support of the acquisition from HTC, Samsung and other Android heavy hitters, BGR has argued the purchase could potentially spell trouble for Motorola’s competitors.

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The U.S. Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission are investigating Motorola Solutions on suspicion of bribery, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. Motorola Solutions, not to be confused with Motorola Mobility, reportedly paid bribes to foreign officials, including Austrian count Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly, in an attempt to increase business in Europe. If the allegations are true, Motorola Solutions will have been in violation of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and will likely be required to pay a fine. The company opened up its own investigation in 2009 after a “suspicious transaction” was made in Turkey and has since asked the U.S. government to aid in the investigation, The Wall Street Journal said, noting that the company is providing federal investigators with internal documents “voluntarily.” Mensdorff-Pouilly was charged with bribery in 2010 after the U.S. government looked into allegations that BAE Systems was also paying off foreign officials in return for business.

According to CNBC, Facebook may go public during the first quarter of next year, and sources expect the company could be valued at more than $100 billion. Facebook could find an IPO more attractive once it surpasses a total of 500 investors, because after that milestone it will be required to file financial information with the SEC each quarter — otherwise known as the “500 rule” of the 1934 Securities and Exchange Act. CNBC said that Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer, recently said that an IPO would be “the next thing that happens” and that such a move is “inevitable.”

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We just received an invite from Barnes & Noble for a press event that’s being held in New York City on Tuesday, May 24th. We suspect this will be the bookstore’s third major eReader announcement, which is in line with a recent SEC filing that suggested such a launch was imminent. It’s unclear what features the new eReader will offer, although we suspect it could be powered by the Android Honeycomb operating system, which was specifically designed for use in tablets. We’ll be reporting live from the event on Tuesday morning.

International Business Machines (IBM)  has agreed to a settlement in a bribery case filed by the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC). The SEC alleges that IBM, through its overseas subsidiaries, bribed Chinese and South Korean government officials with gifts, trips, and cash payments in exchange for government contracts from 1998 to 2009. According to the SEC’s filing, IBM used “local business partners and travel agencies as conduits for bribes or other improper payments to South Korean and Chinese government officials over long periods of time.” The government agency also notes that IBM tried to hide its wrongdoings by recording the transactions as legitimate business expenses. The terms of the settlement, which would see IBM paying out $10 million, is still awaiting court approval.

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Social networking giant Facebook may be looking to conquer another market, Wall Street. After news spread of a $500 million investment — $450 million from Goldman Sachs and $50 million from Russia’s Sky Technologies — Facebook was given a valuation of $50 billion by market analysts and firms. The eleven figure price tag was placed upon the privately held company even as the government’s Securities and Exchange Commission has, purportedly, launched a formal inquiry into Facebook’s private-share trading activity. According to the Times, the SEC is investigating the “increasingly hot private market for shares in Internet companies, including Facebook, Twitter, the gaming site Zynga and LinkedIn.” The government agency is looking for loopholes in the public disclosure laws that companies, investors, and firms may be exploiting through the use of private shares. A $50 billion valuation of Facebook makes the company’s youthful CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, worth an estimated $15 billion — more than double the estimated $6.9 billion net-worth put on Facebook’s founder back in September.

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Four new arrests were made Thursday as the Securities and Exchange Commission and other U.S. government agencies continue to crack down on “channel checks” and other related practices. The defendants – identified as Walter Shimoon (VP of Business Development at Flextronics), Mark Longoria (supply chain manager at AMD), Manosha Karunatilaka (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd) and James Fleishman (sales manager at an “expert networking” firm) — have been charged with various crimes surrounding alleged insider trading. Court filings indicate that Shimoon, Longoria and Karunatilaka were hired as consultants by Fleishman’s expert networking firm. The men allegedly passed along corporate secrets about Apple, AMD and other companies to two unnamed hedge funds. Court filings also indicate that Shimoon was paid to leak non-public details surrounding the iPhone 4 and iPad ahead of Apple’s public announcements.

“Today’s charges allege that a corrupt network of insiders at some of the world’s leading technology companies served as so-called ‘consultants’ who sold out their employers by stealing and then peddling their valuable inside information,” Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement. “Over the next many months and beyond, we will continue to enforce the law, police the market, and protect honest businesses and their shareholders by working methodically with the FBI and SEC to root out corporate corruption and insider trading.”

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Some analysts could soon find themselves in hot water as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has opened an investigation into the legality of “channel checks.” Channel checks refer to the practice whereby analysts contact inside sources at manufacturing companies in order to glean inside information. This information often has a tendency to move the market, of course, but the SEC is now trying to determine whether or not the practice should be legal. “Insider trading basically comes down to where you know or ought to know that the person from whom you’re getting this information has a duty to someone else to keep it confidential,” former SEC commissioner Paul Atkins told The Wall Street Journal. “If you go in and pay the mail clerk to give you special information, that’s not proper.” Beyond just the analysts involved, the SEC is also investigating “expert networks,” which get paid to connect investors with inside sources.

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Microsoft has issued a statement describing Steve Ballmer’s plans to sell up to 75 million shares in order “to gain financial diversification and to assist in tax planning”. A sale this large is bound to ring alarm bells with shareholders, however Ballmer has cleared the air of any brewing conspiracy theories. “Even though this is a personal financial matter, I want to be clear about this to avoid any confusion. I am excited about our new products and the potential for our technology to change people’s lives, and I remain fully committed to Microsoft and its success,” said the Redmond CEO. SEC filings indicate that Steve Ballmer has already sold 49 million shares, making him a cool $1.3 billion. With capital gains tax said to increase to 20 from 15% in January, Steve Ballmer has just saved himself some serious money.

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The iPhone 4 has been out for well over a month now, so it is only natural that iPhone rumors begin again, no? Over the weekend, two iPhone rumors of interest were spotted on the interwebs. The first comes via blog TechCrunch, TC is reporting that:

Sources with knowledge of this entire situation have assured me that Apple has submitted orders for millions of units of Qualcomm CDMA chipsets for a Verizon iPhone run due in December. This production run would likely be for a January launch, and I’d bet the phone is nearly 100% consistent with the current iPhone 4 (with a fixed internal insulator on the antenna).

We’ll let you decide how feasible a Verizon iPhone in December is, it isn’t like we’ve ever heard that before.

The next rumor come courtesy of an SEC filing from AT&T. In the filing, dated June 30th, the company writes:

In addition, offering a number of attractive handsets on an exclusive basis distinguishes us from our competitors. As these exclusivity arrangements end, we expect to continue to offer such handsets (based on historical industry practice), and we believe our service plan offerings will help to retain our customers by providing incentives not to move to a new carrier.

The rub here is that the only device that AT&T has exclusivity on, that would be worth mentioning in an SEC filing, is the iPhone (sorry BlackBerry Torch).

As with all rumors, these should be taken with a heavy dose of NaCl (that’s salt), they are rumors after all.

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We bet everyone out there is saying, “Finally.” And if so, we’re right along with you. Skype has just filed with the SEC for an IPO and will be listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange. In terms of revenue, Skype is reporting EBITDA of $115.8 million on $406.2 million in net revenue for the first six months of 2010. In 2009, however, the filed documents report a loss of $368.6 million on revenue of $718.9 million which is when Skype and eBay no longer shared sippy cups.

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When the news officially broke that HP had put in a winning bid for Palm, it all seemed so simple. HP, a company that has long had its smartphone ambitions beset by poor hardware and execution, seemed to simply be the only company that was really intent on purchasing the troubled company based in Sunnyvale. But according to a recent SEC filing from Palm, what really took place in weeks leading up to HP’s successful bid was a five company bidding war. Click through to get all the facts straight from the horse’s mouth.

On February 17th, Palm CEO John Rubinstein put together a committee charged with investigating what options were at Palm’s disposal. The committee looked into scenarios which included the outright sale of the company, selling all of its IP, and licensing the rights to webOS. Then on the 25th of February — the very same day it slashed its guidance numbers — Palm began talking to 16 companies to gauge their interest in a potential buyout. Of those 16, only 5 entertained the possibility of a deal. HP was one of those companies. In the SEC filing, the names of the four others were withheld and were referred to as Companies A, B, C, and D. Companies A and B as well as HP were interested in the outright acquisition of Palm, while Companies C and D were merely interested in buying its patents. D shortly dropped out of contention for reasons unknown.

As early as March, and with four potential suitors, Palm’s board had concluded it would be best to sell the entire company. The reason for this was that Palm feared backlash for investors as any other deal could easily have devalued the value of its IP. Discussions with the four companies continued. On March 19th, Palm’s stock was devalued to $0 the day after it announced its Q3 2010 results. Four weeks later, April 13th, HP entered a bid of $4.75 per share. Two days later Company A entered a bid of $600 million, while Company C tested the waters with a stock offer. With three potential offers on the table, Palm instructed HP to up the ante. HP refused, but to its luck, Companies A and B withdrew their bids.

Company C entered a new bid worth $6 to $7 per share on April 18th. The next day, Palm sent it and HP draft merger agreements. The 20th and 21st of April saw Palm and HP try and hammer out a deal. On the 22nd, HP raised its offer to $5 per share. Company C, for whatever reason, dropped its offer to $5.50 per share on the same day and asked Palm to agree it would pay a $60 million penalty if they agreed upon a deal only to see it fall through. For the next three days, Palm and Company C tried to resolve their differences to no avail. While the two were in talks, HP raised its bid by 70¢ per share. Company C was warned that if it did not match the bid, all discussion would end. Company C countered with $800 million in exchange for all of Palm’s IP. Palm refused, and Company C walked. From that point on, it took HP and Palm until the 28th of April to get to the point where both companies would put ink to paper.

That, friends, is how Palm was acquired by HP. As we mentioned earlier, the identities of Companies A through D remain a secret, although we think we know how four of them are are: Dell, Huawei, HTC, and Lenovo.

[Via Engadget]

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File this one under “duh”. With all of the commotion caused by Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ announcement earlier this month, it was only a matter of time before the SEC began looking into the matter. For those of you who have been living with the Fraggles for the past few months, allow us to recap the situation in one short series of sentence fragments: Jobs was sick. Apple denied Jobs was sick. Jobs admitted he was sick. As Stevo plays such an integral role in all things Apple, it’s a no-brainer that investors deserved to know what was going on.The question is, did Apple do anything illegal?

To bring any case, the SEC would probably have to show the company tried to benefit by withholding information about an unambiguous diagnosis, said Peter Henning, a former federal prosecutor and SEC lawyer who now teaches at Wayne State University Law School in Detroit.

“It would be difficult, and certainly a new area of the law,” Henning said. “You would have to pin down exactly what they knew, and with a health issue — unlike a merger or a decline in revenue — it’s not subject to definitive answers.”

While the SEC’s inquiry isn’t yet official, a source close to Bloomberg spilled the beans and you can expect official word to come soon as a result. Either way, it looks like the SEC will be treading on some new and tricky ground if its findings are worth pursuing.

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Regardless of how large, powerful and influential a company is, no one is recession-proof. Internet search giant Google has been laying off employees since this summer, and it has been doing so under the news radar for the most part. The SEC requires companies to disclose information regarding layoffs but apparently Google had slipped around the rule and reported its Q3 earnings as expected by saying it had cut down on “operational expenses”. Though Google officially has 20,123 employees, there are an additional 10,000 which are just labeled as temporary operational expenses. However it wants to label those human beings, they are still going to get shafted and are still going to be hurt by this massive cut in manpower. Google’s very own Sergey Brin says, “There is no question that the number (of workers) is too high”.

Though some of these employees are temporary, they have faithfully been employed by Google for several years. The method in which it has kept temporary status and slipped under the SEC radar is by constantly moving employees around to different jobs every so often, thus retaining the temporary employee label and holding on to the bodies nonetheless. They are full time employees without full time benefits. While it’s unfortunate that many of these employees are being let go, they did last longer and enjoy more benefits (Google’s facilities) than most temps do. Times are getting tough and it shows – that’s actually water, not the usual Cristal, in Brin and Page’s hot tub.

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