Broadcom pays $12 million in settlement

The Broadcom Corp., an Irvine-based company chaired by one of Newport-Mesa’s most prominent philanthropists, agreed to pay a $12-million penalty today to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission in response to charges of illegal backdating.

The commission’s complaint, filed in U.S. District Court, alleges that Broadcom falsified its reported income by backdating employee and officer stock options from June 1998 to May 2003. Efforts to reach a Broadcom representative for comment were unsuccessful, but the commission said in a release that the company had neither denied nor admitted to the charges.

Henry Samueli, the owner of the Anaheim Ducks and a namesake at UC Irvine and the Orange County Performing Artscenter, is Broadcom’s chairman and was named in the commission’s complaint as one of the orchestrators of the backdating scheme, although the complaint cites him only by his job title and not by name.

Samueli and Henry Nicholas, the other Broadcom founder, were identified in court as “unindicted potential co-conspirators” during a court hearing in January for Nancy Tullos, a Broadcom employee who pleaded guilty to ordering a subordinate to delete a potentially damaging e-mail.

Michele Wein Layne, the associate regional director of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Los Angeles Regional Office, said the $12-million settlement today resolved the commission’s charges against Broadcom, but added there may be private litigation in the future regarding the backdating allegations.

“We at the SEC are a civil agency, so we can’t bring any criminal actions, and this action is just announcing the filing of our settled action with the company,” she said.

MICHAEL MILLER may be reached at (714) 966-4617 or at michael.miller@latimes.com.