http://www.stltoday.com/blogzone/the-platform/editorial-writers-notebooks/2008/07/about-those-a-b-stock-options/

About those A-B stock options…

A colleague here brought me an excerpt from an
Anheuser-Busch filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It
indicates that as of December 31, 2007, the company’s “equity
compensation plans” had outstanding options for 100,491,526 shares of
common stock, with a “weighted average exercise price” of $47.49.

Maybe those numbers have changed since the end of next year. But
just as an intellectual exercise let’s imagine that they haven’t.

If the holders of those options exercised them ahead of the InBev
buyout at $70 per share, by my calculations the lucky option holders
would realize a “weighted average” gain of $22.51 per share — which
when multiplied by the 1/31/07 total of outstanding options
(100,491,526) yields a $2.26 billion bonanza for what probably is a
large pool of employees who received options under various incentive
stock plans.

Ok. One more step.

Once upon a time St. Louis’ earnings tax applied to gains on stock
options. The law was changed in 2000 when a small number of senior
Ralston Purina executives stood to make $118 million on stock options
and they and the company were unhappy about the prospect of getting
nicked by the city’s 1.5 percent levy.

The Purina payout would have meant $1.7 million to the city.

Multiply the theoretical A-B stock option gain by 1.5 percent and product is in the neighborhood of $34 million.

Something tells me that the city could put that kind of money to good use.

The repeal of the earnings tax as it applies to stock options supposedly was intended to attract new, high tech companies.

That hardly describes the InBev transaction.

Have I missed something in these assumptions and calculations? Are they off base?

If not, should the St. Louis Board of Aldermen quickly convene and
consider emergency legislation that carves out a narrow exception to
the stock option exemption?