Did backdated stock options take Disney for a fantasy ride?

Could this be another one of those corporate scandals where options granted from a previous date were used to estimate the worth of a company? Normally, stock options are granted by a company to expire in 10 years, thus an individual would have 10 years to exercise their option. Naturally, a share holder would wait until the tenth year with hopes that that company's securities would increase in value and hence land a good deal provided that backdated options were not used during negotiations.

Pixar’s sale of $7.4 billion may be just that where Apple's CEO Steven Jobs provided improperly dated options to Disney shareholders making the sale of Pixar a windfall for Jobs causing Disney shareholders to "overpay" for the animation unit.

Currently, 180 companies are under investigation for criminal charges and more than twelve executives have lost their jobs due to corporate fraud. Apple is under investigation by the Securites and Exchange Commission Agency for improper option practices

Amongst theories one has it that Disney overpaid for the Pixar Animation Co. in order to increase the value of it’s own weak animation unit. It could be hard to prove that shareholders overpaid for the backdated options because Disney rushed the deal and did not pay much attention to the dates of the options.

The bottom line is that Disney may have overpaid for Pixar’s Animation Studios Inc. and no one will be able to prove it because dates were picked by Pixar’s management.