Which the recipient has the option to exercise or not. Same thing with a different name to hide what?
No takers for the question? Let’s do a bit of history…
Once upon a time companies introduced stock options as part of executive compensation and all was well while stocks were going up but once stocks went down some executives saw their option become worthless once the stock price dropped below the strike price. Since stock options were granted by management they decided to reprice the options, lowering the strike price and sometimes increasing the number of shares. This got shareholders mad as hell! They were OK with the stock options but changing the rules mid-game to give losers an advantage was truly unfair. Stock options were no longer risky like they used to be but practically guaranteed pay.
The solution was simple, lower the strike price to ZERO and instead of calling them stock options, call them “restricted stock units.” Now it was guaranteed pay, not in dollars but in the number of shares.
The Captain