One of the most amazing performances ever on CNBC

New York Times business reporter David Leonhardt writes in Wednesday’s paper about what he called one of the “more amazing performances in the history of CNBC.”

The performance was an interview that Maria Bartiromo did with Applied Micro Circuits leader Dave Rickey.

Leonhardt wrote, “Within a few minutes, he was making his pitch. His company’s products were not low-priced commodities, he said, and the long-term prospects looked as good as ever. ‘The demand for bandwidth,’ he explained, ‘is not only insatiable, but it’s in its infancy.’

“At this point, Ms. Bartiromo reminded him that about a year earlier, he had dared investors not to own Applied Micro stock, and Mr. Rickey quickly reissued the challenge on CNBC. ‘You know, Maria, I am very bullish about the company. I think we’re in the right space,’ he said. ‘I dare you not to own my stock now. But, you know, I’m kind of a gutsy guy, and I have a lot of confidence in what we’re doing.’

“What made this so amazing was that Mr. Rickey had already come very close to accepting his own dare. Ms. Bartiromo never asked him about his own holdings of company stock, and he didn’t volunteer the information, but it turns out he had sold more than 99 percent of his shares over the previous two years, for a profit of $170 million. He was unloading the same stock that he was urging investors to buy.”

Why does Leonhardt bring this up now, five years later? Because the company and Rickey are now part of a growing investigation by the SEC and the Justice Department over backdating of stock options to boost the profits of executives when exercising those options.

Concluded Leonhardt: “But the rest of us would do well to focus on how somebody could have become so rich while running a company so poorly. I don’t think the solution needs to be complicated. The S.E.C. is already on the verge of requiring that companies do a better job disclosing what they are really paying their executives, in salary, options, pension, private plane use and everything else. The next, crucial step would be mandating that shareholders have the power to remove board members and elect alternatives, which is now nearly impossible. The people who own the company — the ones whose money is being used — need to have control over the purse strings.”

Read more here. What’s left unsaid is the fact that few business journalists, if any, were looking at the dates that stock options were being granted in proxies five and six years ago.