Beyond the Boardroom: Options Get More Exercise; More Companies Find Stock Gifts an Inexpensive Way to Compensate Rank-and-File Workers
Most of the time, Hylda Perry can be found scurrying around the Columbia offices of Norwest Corp.'s trust division, troubleshooting the financial company's computer systems.</br></br>But at least once a day, Perry sits down at her computer and dials up the Internet to check the price of Norwest stock. And Perry's interest in the stock of the Minneapolis-based company has spread to a new-found desire for information on the way markets operate.</br></br>Since 1996, Perry and most of Norwest's other 57,000 employees have received options to buy Norwest shares. An option is the right to buy a share of stock at a preset price at a specified time in the future. If the market price of the stock rises above the price of exercising the option, the option holder pockets a profit.</br></br>Norwest's share price quickly surpassed the $60 price of exercising the options -- giving Perry a chance to make a $2,700 profit -- but she isn't selling, because the stock is still hitting new highs. Also, Norwest granted another round of options last year, with a potential upside of more than $11,000.</br></br>"We can cash out or sell them off, but you don't have to do a thing," Perry said. "I'm holding on to mine for a while, to make more money."