Schadenfreude

Last month, the SEC sued Broadcom’s two founders, Henry Samueli and Henry Nicholas, alleging phony accounting in connection with incentive stock options. Today, the feds unsealed an indictment of Nicholas — charging stock price manipulation, using and distributing drugs and hiring prostitutes for his employees and customers. (Of course, Nicholas denies the charges).

The stock option accusations are not unusual for tech executives, and there are even a few that seriously argue that this is mostly an accounting issue not worthy of felony prosecution. But the sex-and-drugs accusations (stemming from a disgruntled ex-employee’s complaint) are just plain weird, more suitable for a pro athlete than a tech executive. This is complete with the report that (since April) Nicholas has been at a celebrity rehab center in Malibu. No such accusations have been leveled at Dr. Samueli, Nicholas’ former UCI professor who used his Broadcom wealth to endow two engineering schools, UCI and UCLA.

Clearly the course cases will be a major distraction for the company’s founders if not its management. Given all the problems Broadcom has created for Qualcomm, such a distraction would be welcomed by at least some Qualcomm employees and shareholders.

The German word for this is Shadenfreude, although I think the original Qualcomm executive team would have too much class to even hint at it in private. As for the current CEO, I’ve had no direct contact from which to judge; perhaps the best indicator would be how many elbows he throws in his notoriously competitive basketball games.