Sovereign Bancorp Inc.
said it will begin treating stock options as expenses, and as a
result restate first-half earnings to lower profit by as much as
$5 million.
The expense amounts to 2 cents a share and a restatement will
be made later in the quarter once calculations are final,
Sovereign Chairman Jay Sidhu said in a statement.
For the rest of 2001, the cost of options awarded to
employees will be $2.5 million a quarter, said Sidhu, who was
granted 200,000 options in the previous year, according to
Sovereign’s most recent proxy statement.
On July 18, the bank reported $92.4 million in net income for
the second quarter.
Bloomberg News
