It’s an election year and that usually brings personal attack stories, ads and campaigns. That seems to be the case with a recent article published by a left-leaning online news organization which accuses U.S. Senator David Perdue of a “sweetheart deal” after he was allowed to hold onto shares of a Georgia start-up company for a short time after resigning from the company’s board of directors.
An investigation into the facts done by InsiderAdvantage shows no wrong-doing or rule-breaking on the part of Perdue, and found information that you probably won’t see in the mainstream media.
Public information shows that Perdue joined the Cardlytics board in November 2010 and served on that board until 2014, and his only compensation for his service was stock shares that would only be valuable when the company went public. Perdue resigned from the board of the fintech company when he won his Senate seat in 2014 — as required. At the time of his resignation, Perdue had already earned most of his share (295 of 300 had fully vested), meaning that only a small portion (less than 2 percent) pulled forward and those were scheduled to be fully vested by January 2015. Keep in mind, this was six years ago, well before David Perdue became a member of the U.S. Senate, and his only compensation was the stocks.
Although The Intercept reported that Perdue was given several years (until 2020 and 2022 depending on the shares) to cash in on the stock options Perdue exercised his option in 2018 when the company went public. The offer made to Perdue was not unique, and is a common practice for a private company. It was also agreed upon unanimously, according to Cardlytics.
“I was personally there at the time and the Board unanimously agreed with the support of outside counsel to pull forward the options which had not vested,” said Kirk Somers, Chief Legal Officer at Cardlytics. “These amounted to less than two percent of the Senator’s total options, and they were pulled forward by less than a month. This was standard practice for a private company and something we had also done for others.”
“Senator Perdue was a very involved and valuable board member, particularly as a past CEO of a retail company,” said Dani Cushion, Chief Marketing Officer at Cardlytics. “In 2014, the board unanimously agreed to give Senator Perdue the grace period to make use of the options he had earned. This is not unique to Senator Perdue and in other circumstances with employees leaving Cardlytics, the board has also granted the same opportunity. What he earned before he went to the Senate was his only compensation for his four years of service, and this type of acceleration and extension is common practice.”
Allegations were also made Perdue sits on the powerful Senate Banking Committee and has worked to roll back regulations to govern firms the Cardlytics and has even sponsored legislation that would be to the firm’s benefit.
However, officials with Cardlytics have confirmed that they have never lobbied Senator Perdue. Also, the bill mentioned is a bi-partisan and was introduced with Tillis (R-NC), Sinema (D-AZ) and Gary Peters (D-MI). The bill later stalled.
