High-technology folk swing a line

As the Financial Accounting Standards Board calls for stock options to be treated as an expense in the profit and loss account, the big wheels of the US information technology sector are already on the attack. One of their more politically astute lines is that the FASB move will kill off benefits enjoyed by the whole workforce. Intel, for example, boasts that 90 per cent of employees receive stock options, while 95 per cent of the options go to employees, not executives. This is high technology's answer to Karl Marx and it makes about as much sense.