What was the trigger for John Sculley’s abrupt departure from Spectrum Information Technologies Inc? According to the Wall Street Journal, the last straw came when Sculley read newspaper reports detailing how chairman Peter Caserta and two other top Spectrum executives had exercised stock options and immediately sold shares in the weeks immediately after Sculley was hired, making combined per-tax profits of more than $13m; moreover they clearly sought to lure Sculley into their unsavoury profit-making, because the options he was granted were exercisable from one week before his appointment was announced, so that he could cash in when the news sent the share price soaring; he did not exercise them, however.
