Google Lawyer Settles With SEC

We used to call this “no blood, no foul” when we played basketball on the playground. Drummond will pay the SEC and admit no wrongdoing with regards to claims he failed to maintain proper accounting controls at a previous job.

The Boston Globe said Drummond, several co-defendants, and an Irish unit of accounting firm Ernst & Young all settled under similar terms where no one admitted to doing anything wrong. The firm in question, SkillSoft, known as SmartForce when Drummond was there, overstated revenue and profit from 1999 through 2002.

Drummond’s settlement won’t earn him any repercussions from his current employer, either. The Globe noted Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s support of Drummond and the settlement, and another Google spokesperson said there would be no discipline of their top attorney.

As for the six-figure settlement, Drummond shouldn’t have any problem with that. On March 1st, he exercised an option to pick up 15,000 shares of Google at zero cost. When the market opens today with Google shares priced at $512, those shares will be worth $7.68 million.