Broadcom Will Pay $160.5M To Settle Suits

(CN) - Broadcom Corp. will pay $160.5 million to settle shareholder lawsuits who complained of illegal backdating of stock option grants. The settlement, reached Tuesday, covers class-actions that investors filed between July 2005 and July 2006.

The Irvine, Calif.-based computer chip company did not admit any wrongdoing as part of the settlement.

The agreement comes after a judge earlier this month dismissed criminal securities fraud charges against the company's co-founder Henry T. Nicholas III and former CEO William J. Ruehle, The Associated Press reported. U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney also threw out co-founder Henry Samueli's guilty plea to a charge of lying about the backdating practice.

Details of how the money would be distributed wasn't immediately known.

Broadcom was accused of backdating stock option grants to its employees without telling them that they were backdated.

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