Font Size:

Just how badly did Apple want to hire Daniel Cooperman?

Enough to give the former Oracle general counsel 133,000 shares of restricted stock, worth about $25 million at the end of trading Thursday when the company announced the grant. And enough that Apple CEO Steve Jobs handled his recruitment personally, according to an individual familiar with the situation who did not want to be named.

Apple named Cooperman GC on Sept. 28, the same day it was announced that then-GC Donald Rosenberg would be leaving for Qualcomm after only 10 months on the job. The triple play was completed when Oracle announced it was promoting Dorian Daley to its top legal spot.

Rosenberg had restricted Apple stock worth about $30 million at the time he left, and the first quarter of that was scheduled to vest Dec. 1.

Rosenberg's new job doesn't seem to offer as much upside. A Qualcomm regulatory filing shows he received 500,000 options at about $40 a share, or about a dollar below where the shares closed Friday.

Jobs began talking with Cooperman in the summer, at least by August, according to someone familiar with the situation. The Apple boss also talked with Oracle CEO Larry Ellison -- the two are known to be friends -- before getting serious with Cooperman.

"I don't think [Cooperman] met anyone else in the company until Jobs had talked to Ellison personally," said an individual familiar with the situation.

Recruiters say that a demanding boss like Jobs probably saw Cooperman as a crucial hire.

"You need someone who's really seasoned, who's really trusted -- and whose general counsel would you trust more than your best friend's general counsel?" said Martha Africa, a longtime recruiter, now with Hodge Niederer Cariani Lindsay, who was not involved in Cooperman's placement.

Lawyers and legal recruiters speculated that Rosenberg, an East Coast IBM lawyer before coming to Apple, wasn't the best fit for the Silicon Valley company. But few details have emerged about the circumstances of his departure.

Nor is it entirely clear whether it was Cooperman's arrival or Rosenberg's departure that sparked the three-way move.

A Qualcomm spokesperson said the San Diego chipmaker conducted a nationwide search for a new general counsel in mid-summer, but declined to say when the company first contacted Rosenberg. The company's longtime general counsel, Louis Lupin, departed in mid-August, after a series of setbacks.

In any event, Qualcomm was pleased to welcome Rosenberg: The company gave him more options than it had given its chief financial officer or chief technical officer last year.

"If his grant is not out of line with the other senior executives, it shows that they're considering him one of their top executives," said Tom LaWer, a principal at Compensia Inc., an executive compensation consulting shop in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Qualcomm is engaged in a broad array of litigation against rival Broadcom Corp., along with other companies. At the time of Lupin's departure, Qualcomm had suffered a host of litigation defeats, and in one, a San Diego judge found that Qualcomm's legal team had committed "litigation misconduct," and may impose sanctions.

Apple has had its own troubles. Rosenberg's predecessor at Apple, Nancy Heinen, faces SEC civil charges in connection with stock option backdating. Heinen's lawyers have said she did nothing wrong. Apple's share price has doubled in less than a year and as its business grows, so too do the potential legal issues.

"Dan is a proven quantity: He's operated in a fast-moving environment where there were a lot of deals, a lot of innovation, a lot of really smart people with no shortage of forceful personality," said Robert Major, a longtime GC recruiter with Major Lindsey & Africa who was not involved in Cooperman's hire. "[Jobs] wanted someone from the Valley, he wanted someone who was familiar to him."

Cooperman has cashed in about $6.8 million worth of Oracle stock since late September around the time his move was announced. Meanwhile, Oracle's new GC, Daley, received options to buy 150,000 shares at $20.75 in mid-October.

Rosenberg did not return phone calls. Apple representatives declined to comment beyond the company's initial press release.

Subscribe to The Recorder