So why is this man smiling?

Because he owns a big chunk of Netflix stock. And that stock has gotten much, much more valuable in the last 12 months.

A year ago, when Netflix was trading at $106, Hastings owned a 4.4 percent stake in the streaming video company, which was worth $265 million. Today, Hastings’s stake is up to 4.5 percent (more than half his ownership comes via options); at $215 a share, it is worth $559 million.

That is: The value of Reed Hastings’s Netflix holdings increased by almost $300 million in the last 12 months.

So he’s probably not smarting from a one-year pay cut.

Just in case he was, Netflix has boosted his 2013 pay. His salary will increase from $500,000 to $2 million, and he’ll get an option allowance of $2 million, up from $1.5 million.

If you want to see another happy Netflix shareholder, by the way, talk to Carl Icahn. Icahn accumulated a 9.9 percent stake in Netflix last fall, paying $58 a share. Today those shares are worth nearly $1.2 billion, which means Icahn is up close to $900 million in less than a year.

The move follows months of back-and-forth between the exchange operator and the Securities and Exchange Commission over technical errors that plagued Facebook’s public offering on the Nasdaq Stock Market almost a year ago.

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In a statement broadcast Friday morning, BlackBerry said it will seek a review of a client note from investment firm Detwiler Fenton that reported return rates for the company’s new Z10 smartphone in the U.S. were extraordinarily high. “In several cases, returns are now exceeding sales, a phenomenon we have never seen before,” Detwiler Fenton claimed.

The research firm’s report brutalized BlackBerry’s stock, dragging the company’s share price down about 7.8 percent to $13.55. BlackBerry rebutted the claims before day’s end Thursday, describing them as “absolutely false” in an emailed statement that argued that Z10 return rates are not only in line with or better than expectations, but are consistent with return rates for other rival smartphones.

And this morning it went on the offensive. In an official press release, BlackBerry said it is seeking regulatory review of the Detwiler Fenton report by both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Ontario Securities Commission.

“Return rate statistics show that we are at or below our forecasts and right in line with the industry,” BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins said. “To suggest otherwise is either a gross misreading of the data or a willful manipulation. Such a conclusion is absolutely without basis and BlackBerry will not leave it unchallenged.”

Detwiler Fenton, for its part, says it is confident in its research methodology and welcomes any regulatory scrutiny.

Here’s Bezos, four paragraphs into his annual letter to shareholders, released this morning:

We build automated systems that look for occasions when we’ve provided a customer experience that isn’t up to our standards, and those systems then proactively refund customers. One industry observer recently received an automated email from us that said, “We noticed that you experienced poor video playback while watching the following rental on Amazon Video On Demand: Casablanca. We’re sorry for the inconvenience and have issued you a refund for the following amount: $2.99. We hope to see you again soon.” Surprised by the proactive refund, he ended up writing about the experience: “Amazon ‘noticed that I experienced poor video playback …’ And they decided to give me a refund because of that? Wow … Talk about putting customers first.”

I don’t know why Bezos didn’t want to identify Blodget as “the industry observer” by name. But you can’t accuse him of quoting Blodget out of context.

Here’s the title of the post Bezos is citing: “Just The Latest Example Of Why Amazon Is One Of The Most Successful Companies In The World,” which Blodget posted on Dec. 9, 2012, presumably as he was finishing up his negotiations with Bezos (and researching another post).

If he wanted to, Bezos could have kept quoting Blodget. Here’s the “nut graph” of Blodget’s post: “Amazon is obsessed with making its customers happy. Unlike many other companies, Amazon will instantly trade off short-term profits for the chance to engender long-term customer loyalty.”

You also can’t accuse Blodget of praising Bezos solely to help secure an investment in his website (where I am also an investor, but much, much farther down the cap table). Blodget has famously been an Amazon bull for a long, long time.

And I’m reasonably sure that Bezos didn’t consult Blodget before he wrote today’s letter: Via IM, I just asked Blodget if he’d seen Bezos’s letter.

His response: “WHOA!”

The streaming-video service, which recently dodged a bullet from the Securities and Exchange Commission over a Facebook posting, told investors Wednesday in a regulatory filing it may use the social-networking site or Twitter to disclose material information.

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Reed Hastings found that out the hard way, after he shared some company user numbers to his Facebook page last fall. The Securities and Exchange Commission wasn’t cool with that, saying at the time that Hastings had disclosed material information to only a subset of his shareholders by not simultaneously filing a disclosure with the SEC. For his sharing, Hastings was slapped with a nice little SEC investigation.

Fortunately for Hastings — and other share-happy CEOs — the SEC came back with a ruling on Tuesday, essentially saying a Facebook disclosure is public enough for stockholders to learn about any material info.

“Most social media are perfectly suitable methods for communicating with investors, but not if the access is restricted or if investors don’t know that’s where they need to turn to get the latest news,” said George Canellos, Acting Director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement, in a statement.

So basically, it’s cool to share material info on a social network. As long as you disclose just which network you’re sharing said material on, the SEC stipulates.

In other words, go ahead, Reed! Share all the data points you want about Netflix on your social networks. Just remember to point out to your shareholders that you’re doing it on Facebook, not Twitter. Or vice versa.

The whole point of this kerfuffle is that all stockholders should be privy to the same info at the same time. And typically, the SEC’s official website was the best place to go for that (or at least, the default place — “best” is arguable).

“One set of shareholders should not be able to get a jump on other shareholders just because the company is selectively disclosing important information,” Canellos said.

But as I’ve argued in the past, and as the SEC seems to have recognized on Tuesday, social networks like Facebook and Twitter have massive reach, touching upward of 1.2 billion people on a monthly basis (if you combine the two networks). And in the tech community at least, PR email blasts and newswire releases are giving way to Facebook and Twitter blitzes, eschewing the traditional means of distributing information for other, arguably more effective methods.

(Dan Primack over at Fortune has some good thoughts on this as well, as he’s quite learned in the ways of Reg FD, the antiquated legislation that got Hastings in trouble in the first place.)

As for Hastings, he’ll be getting off scot-free, with the SEC dropping its investigation because of the novelty of social media and sharing practices.

I’m just waiting to see what happens when a CEO snaps an Instagram of their company’s 10-K.

Business Insider’s co-founder and editor is the subject of a Ken Auletta profile in this week’s New Yorker, which means Henry Blodget is now in some rarefied media mogul air (see: Rupert Murdoch, Bill Gates, Sheryl Sandberg, etc.)

And at the end of Auletta’s piece, which you should be able to read here soon, Blodget tells Auletta he would like to come back to Wall Street, where he has been barred from working since his 2003 SEC settlement. Or at least he’d like the option:

“Ten years ago, I got what amounted to a dishonorable discharge from the industry, and I’ve always been ashamed of that. At some point, if it seems appropriate, I would like to explore the possibility of being reinstated.”

So there you go.

Is this an attempt at an attention-grabbing way of summarizing an extensively reported story someone else produced? Yep! And am I going to (respectfully) aggregate the rest of this piece? Of course!

• Henry Blodget says he was a “loner” when he went to Yale in the mid-80s. His extra-curricular activities included tennis, chess, frisbee, rock-climbing, a capella singing and studying for a pilot’s license.
• Business Insider, which claimed revenue of $5 million in 2011, lost $3 million in 2012.
• TBI chairman Kevin Ryan says the company will do $11 million this year (last summer someone told the WSJ the company would do $12 million in 2012); he says the site has only spent $7 million of the $13 million it has raised.
• Though Comscore pegs the site’s traffic at 9 million, Blodget tells Auletta that his Google Analytics numbers are at 24 million unique monthly users, many of whom come from outside the U.S.
• If you’ve spent a lot of time thinking and reading about Henry Blodget, you won’t find a lot that is new here. But Auletta is thorough, and does a particularly good job of explaining Blodget’s Wall Street past, and its context. So the time you put in on the 7-page piece is most definitely worth it.
• I’m quoted in the piece a couple of times, accurately. I still own a few shares of Business Insider. So I hope if it is acquired by a big media company, as a board member predicts will happen one day, it’s for a lot of money.

The approval of the plan by the Securities and Exchange Commission marks an end to months of uncertainty among brokers over potential relief for losses from the social-networking company’s May 2012 initial public offering.

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Lawyers from the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission are examining kickback allegations made by a former Microsoft representative in China, as well as the company’s relationship with certain resellers and consultants in Romania and Italy, these people said.

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Sidney Fitzwater, U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of Texas, declined to dismiss on summary judgment the Securities and Exchange Commission’s civil suit against Mr. Cuban. The SEC is entitled to present its case to a jury, Judge Fitzwater said in a written order Tuesday.

Mr. Cuban has denied wrongdoing.

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The meat of the opinion is on page 10:

“Having carefully reviewed the record before it, the Court finds that Greenlight and Gralnick face irreparable harm if they are compelled to vote on Proposal No. 2 in violation of SEC rules. By voting either against the slate of amendments and thus against two amendments they support, or for the amendments – including the offending “blank check” provision that they oppose – Greenlight and Gralnick will have been forced to vote on a package of items for which they did not have a single position, and denied the right to inform management of their views on specific items.”

Sullivan goes on:

Apple’s arguments in opposition fundamentally misunderstand the harm alleged. For instance, Apple insists that there is no irreparable harm because the “blank check” amendment will not eliminate the company’s power to issue preferred stock. (Opp’n to Green. 17-18.) But the harm is that Greenlight and Gralnick will be forced to cast an unrepresentative and illegal vote, not that they might be denied their desired substantive outcome. Apple’s contention that any harm is mooted because shareholders could reinstate the “blank check” provision through a later proxy vote is likewise beside the point.

Here’s the full decision:

Greenlight Ruling by Arik Hesseldahl

The shareholder, Southeastern Asset Management Inc., which says it owns approximately 8.5 percent of Dell’s outstanding shares, voiced its opposition to the leveraged buyout in a strongly-worded letter to the Round Rock, Texas, company’s board of directors. A copy of the letter was filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

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The Seattle-based company has lost four of its top executives, representing 40 years of combined service. So far, only one has been replaced.

All of the changes have happened quietly, without any announcements from the company — and stranger yet, most of the departed continue to be listed on the company’s leadership page.

But the departures are easily trackable after reading the company’s annual report filed last week with the Securities and Exchange Commission. When compared with the same filing a year earlier, it’s clear that Amazon’s top ranks are dwindling.

In 2011, the executive team had a dozen members. Now it has nine. The departures appear, though, to be part of a normal turnover process, rather than any meaningful restructuring.

Still, it’s hard to comprehend that Amazon’s management team has gotten smaller during the past year while the company’s overall headcount swelled to 88,400 in 2012 from 56,200 in 2011. Additionally, the e-commerce giant has entered several new businesses over the past decade.

The four executives who are gone are: Michelle Wilson, Amazon’s general counsel; Steven Kessel, SVP of Worldwide Digital Media; Marc Onetto, SVP of Worldwide Operations; and Sebastian J. Gunningham, SVP of Seller Services.

Two of the departures are easier to explain than the others.

For example, Wilson, who had been the company’s general counsel since 1999, stepped down in September to take parental leave. Her departure was documented by GeekWire in August, and Ty Rogers, a company spokesman, confirmed that she was replaced by David Zapolsky, who now holds three titles: VP, general counsel and secretary.

Another executive who can easily be accounted for is Kessel, who oversaw the company’s digital strategy, including books, music, video and the all-important Kindle. He has been on sabbatical now for about a year, as we reported last April.

“Steve continues to enjoy his well-deserved sabbatical, and we look forward to him returning later this year,” Rogers said.

Rogers also explained the departure of Onetto, though very briefly, saying that he had decided to retire after seven years on the job. Rogers declined to specify Onetto’s departure date, but according to the company’s annual report, he is no longer a top executive.

The biggest mystery of the four is the disappearance of Gunningham from the executive officer list (mostly because Rogers would offer only vague comments related to his standing at the company). Gunningham had served as the company’s SVP of Seller Services for five years. Update: Gunningham continues to hold the same title at Amazon, but is no longer a Section 16 officer, according to the company.

As I previously reported, I called what I believe to be Gunningham’s home number twice to clarify, but no one answered and his voicemail was full (Note to Gunningham: clean out your inbox!).

And, in response to multiple inquiries, Rogers repeated one answer: “As you may know, the 10-K only lists Section 16 officers.”

To explain, a Section 16 officer is essentially legal jargon for a member of the company’s executive team, so essentially Rogers is saying that Gunningham is simply that — no longer on the executive team.

Amazon, like other publicly held companies, is not required to disclose the departure of all executive team members, only the CEO, president, CFO, chief accounting officer and COO (although there are some exceptions). Therefore, the one way to notice if an executive has left is by checking the annual report year after year. In this case, that’s especially true since Amazon generally has no C-level execs. Rather, all of its officers hold the title of SVP.

Despite the departures, the Amazon team still has a bench of nine executives (including Wilson’s replacement), so it’s not like the company is running without an engine. And, of course, at the top of the pyramid continues to be founder and Chairman and CEO, Jeff Bezos.

The social-networking company’s IPO was one of the most anticipated in years, and the technology errors that plagued the Nasdaq Stock Market that morning were widely considered a blow to investor confidence.

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J.P. Morgan now owns 2.6 million shares, or less than half of a percent of the social games company. Based on today’s stock price of $2.59 a share, the shares are worth only $7 million.

A big reduction by an institutional investor, like J.P. Morgan, implies that it doesn’t have a lot of confidence that the company can turn things around in the coming months.

The last time J.P. Morgan updated its stake was a year ago. In January 2012, J.P. Morgan said it owned 6.7 million shares, which equated to a 6.7 percent stake. Back then, shares were trading at $9.12, so the stake was worth a whole lot more, roughly $61 million.

It’s not clear exactly when J.P. Morgan sold its share or at what price. Typically, institutions update their records when their holdings drop below 5 percent.

J.P. Morgan’s relationship with Zynga began during its public offering, with the bank serving as an underwriter. As part of the deal, the bank agreed to buy an undisclosed number of shares associated with the IPO.

Since then, the bank’s research department has flip-flopped about the company’s prospects.

In March, three months after the IPO, J.P. Morgan’s analyst downgraded Zynga to “neutral” from “overweight,” which sent shares sliding by 6 percent. A month later, J.P. Morgan reversed its upgrade and returned the stock’s rating to “overweight.”

It was optimistic about the company’s acquisition of Draw Something and Zynga’s management team’s decision to raise full-year guidance based on the performance of the acquired mobile game.

Of course, Zynga’s troubles started shortly after, with the company having to revise its guidance downward more than once. Not only did its Draw Something game fail to meet management’s expectations, but its revenue on Facebook also dropped.

Zynga’s stock jumped 4.4 percent today to $2.59 a share. The 11 cent spike was tied to the news that Zynga’s patent portfolio has increased as it begins investing more heavily in online gambling.

The streaming-video service said it would pay Mr. Hastings a $2 million salary with $2 million of compensation through stock options, according to a document filed late Friday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

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The investigation confirmation came as part of HP’s annual report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. But this move was entirely expected given HP took its case to the FBI/DOJ and the SEC in the United States as well as the Serious Fraud Office in the U.K.

HP said it was alerted by the DOJ on Nov. 21 that it had officially opened an investigation about Autonomy.

Former Autonomy CEO Mike Lynch has strenuously rejected HP’s claims and has demanded to see evidence for them.

A spokesman for HP declined to comment on the matter.

RELATED POSTS:

• More From Mike Lynch: HP’s Autonomy Accusations Are Getting Weaker
• Mike Lynch Punches Back at Today’s HP Filing: Whither $5B Writedown?
• HP Confirms DOJ Is Investigating Alleged Fraud in Autonomy Deal
• Yes, There Are Layoffs Pending at HP’s Autonomy Unit in the U.K.
• Former HP CEO Shifts Blame for Autonomy Deal to Chairman
• Dell Passed on Autonomy Before HP Bought It
• Why Mike Lynch Is Playing PR Hardball With HP
• Autonomy Founder Lynch Asks Board to Explain HP Allegations
• Autonomy Founder Lynch Blames Accounting Standards in HP Flap
• The Red Flags That Were Obvious — To Some — In the HP-Autonomy Deal
• Oracle’s Ellison Vindicated in Autonomy PR Flap by HP’s $8.8 Billion Writedown
• Autonomy Founder Mike Lynch Rejects HP Charges, Alleges Mismanagement
• What Exactly Happened at Autonomy?
• HP Explains Its $8.8 Billion “Oops”
• HP Beats Street Amid Sales Declines, Takes $8.8 Billion Charge
• HP Names Microsoft Exec Robert Youngjohns to Run Autonomy
• Search Under Way at HP for Autonomy’s Next Chief
• Autonomy’s Mike Lynch Talks About Being HP’s Speedy Tiger Cub (Video)
• Britain’s First Software Billionaire Now Reports to HP CEO Meg Whitman
• Oracle Launches Exalytics Machine, Probably Ending Spat With Autonomy
• Autonomy: When All Else Fails, Blame the Bankers
• Mike Lynch to Oracle: Oh, You Mean Those Slides
• Oracle: You Have a Very Bad Memory, Mr. Lynch
• HP Reportedly Close to $10 Billion Buyout of Autonomy, PC Unit Spinoff
• Will Oracle and Microsoft Bid on Autonomy?

Last year, you may remember, Big Blue agreed to a $10 million fine to the SEC to settle a civil lawsuit charging that it paid bribes to government officials in China and South Korea during a period from 1998 to 2009.

Now the judge reviewing the settlement is demanding some onerous reporting requirements that the company says are too burdensome, according to a Bloomberg report. And the SEC is taking its side.

Judge Richard Leon (pictured from his Wikipedia bio), who has been reviewing the case for 22 months, says he wants IBM to report on a significantly wider range of issues, some of which aren’t connected to the substance of the original bribery complaint against it.

Most of the time, judges sign off on these settlements. Companies come clean and agree to show that they’re staying clean by not doing what they’ve been accused of. But apparently Leon’s blood is up over this. He has told IBM that he wants annual reports on its compliance with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the law that governs bribery overseas, and he wants the reports to cite all potential accounting violations. IBM has so far agreed only to report on matters related to bribery, which is what the original complaint is about. The next hearing is set for Feb 4.

In the original complaint, the SEC said that IBM made payments to “secure the sale of IBM products through IBM-Korea and LG-IBM’s business partners,” referring to IBM units in South Korea and China. IBM was accused of paying $207,000 in bribes to South Korean officials, including cash, gifts, travel and entertainment expenses and free computers.

In 1998, the SEC says, a territory manager for IBM-Korea met the head of operations for a South Korean government agency and gave him a shopping bag filled with 20 million Korean won, about $19,000. Over time, the same official received payments totaling about 80 million won, or about $76,000, by 2001. What did IBM supposedly get in return? Designation as a preferred supplier for mainframe computers, and an agreement to place orders at higher prices.

From 2004 through early 2009, it “engaged in a widespread practice of providing overseas trips, entertainment and improper gifts to Chinese government officials,” the SEC said, adding that the misconduct involved as many as 100 employees of IBM China.

In China, the SEC says, IBM China employees created what it describes as “slush funds” with local travel agencies that were used to pay the travel expense incurred by local government officials. Other slush funds, it says, were created with business partners to provide cash payments and gifts like cameras and notebook computers.

IBM is not alone in getting caught in these bribery cases. In August, Oracle, paid $2 million to settle an SEC case brought against it over allegations of misconduct in India. In 2010, Hewlett-Packard faced bribery charges in Russia, in a case that’s now being investigated by a court in Germany.

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon said he couldn’t approve the settlement unless the SEC and IBM agreed to abide by additional settlement terms imposed by the court or explain why the terms are “too burdensome,” as lawyers for IBM argued.

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Except, that is, for the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is considering taking action against Netflix for a Facebook post made by Netflix CEO Reed Hastings.

The whole scenario is strange. The SEC’s main beef: Netflix didn’t disclose potentially market-moving information in a regulatory filing or a press release, which are the usual methods of pushing out information to the public all at once. Hastings instead used a status update, and the SEC says that’s just not good enough.

Sorry, SEC — I’m calling shenanigans on this one.

Chew on this: If the aim of the Regulation Fair Disclosure rule — the very rule the SEC claims Netflix is breaking — is to relay important information at scale, what better way to do it than on the world’s most widely used social network?

In this day and age, I’d argue sharing something on Facebook is one of most public acts one can make. It’s built into Facebook’s very mission statement, to “make the world a more open” place.

Public figures like Hastings can allow hundreds of thousands of people to subscribe to his Page — which he has done — pushing out information to them near instantaneously via status updates. Netflix can set up a brand Page, posting stats and significant milestones to the 3.6 million Facebook users that follow Netflix on the social network.

In the tech community at least, PR wire services are giving way to in-house, DIY methods of publishing information, with sites like Facebook and Twitter becoming crucial platforms to carry that out.

Even Facebook itself uses its platform to communicate milestones to the public, publishing statistics to the company’s many organizational Pages on the site. Similarly, sites like Twitter make major announcements via its own messaging service (though unlike both Facebook and Netflix, Twitter isn’t publicly traded).

Like it or not, we’ve arrived in a new era of mass communications. Facebook users flock to the platform to vote en masse. The state of Israel announced a military operation last month not by press release or on television, but through a full-scale social campaign using Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest. Even the pope himself has blessed Twitter with his presence.

While the messages may still be the same, the mediums are changing around us so fast it’s tough for anyone — especially D.C. regulators — to keep up.

Maybe that will change a few years from now. Perhaps at Facebook’s two billion user mark.

Back in July, Hastings wrote on his Facebook page that Netflix users had streamed more than 1 billion hours of video in June. The SEC is apparently looking into whether or not that violates fair-disclosure rules.

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It’s hard to say how serious this is right now, but Yahoo was ordered to pay $2.7 billion in a lawsuit related to a breach of contract and lost profits of a yellow pages listing service by Worldwide Directories and Ideas Interactivas.

In a statement and a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Silicon Valley Internet giant said it “believes the plaintiffs’ claims are without merit and will vigorously pursue all appeals.”

We lobbed a call into Yahoo to get more details about the “non-final” judgment from the 49th Civil Court of the Federal District of Mexico City — not that the company’s PR will actually call back on important multi-billion matters — but here is the company’s SEC filing:

SEC-YHOO-1193125-12-487828

Mr. Ergen offered to buy MetroPCS for $11 a share, to be paid in 30 percent cash and 70 percent stock, according to a MetroPCS filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission late Friday and people familiar with the matter. Mr. Ergen had courted MetroPCS since at least last March, according to the filing, which identified Dish only as “Company C.” The people familiar with the matter said Company C was Dish.

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