Steve Jobs, the chairman of Apple Computer, still faces the prospect of an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice, The Times has learnt, even though he did not benefit personally from the repeated backdating of stock options.

Apple published its long-awaited annual report yesterday. It contained details of the company’s internal investigation into options backdating.

The findings appeared to exonerate Mr Jobs, concluding that, although he was aware of options backdating and even chose some of the dates, he was not aware of the accounting implications of the practice.

The report added that Mr Jobs did not benefit financially from the backdating programme because he returned all the stock options granted to him during the period under investigation.

However, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the US market regulator, which is already investigating the stock options scandal at more than 100 companies, including Apple, told The Times that an executive could be found guilty of backdating without benefiting from the award.

A spokesman for the SEC, who was unable to comment directly on the Apple investigation, said: “An executive does not have to benefit personally from stock options backdating to be found to have violated the rules . . . Past cases show that personal gain is not a precondition to any action by this office.”

The SEC would not confirm whether the company or Mr Jobs was under investigation, but it is understood that investigators from the regulator’s enforcement division next month will begin to look into more than one million pages of evidence gathered by Apple during its internal review of the stock options affair.

The Justice Department is also said to be looking into the backdating of options at Apple. It declined to comment.

Apple, meanwhile, will restate financial results dating back to 2002 and take an $84 million (£43 million) charge after the board committee found that it had misdated thousands of stock options grants.

However, the committee was adamant that the management had done nothing wrong and said that it had “complete confidence in Steve Jobs”.

Al Gore, the former US Vice-President and chairman of the special board committee, and Jerome York, chairman of Apple’s audit and finance committee, said: “The board of directors is confident that the company has corrected the problems that led to the restatement and it has complete confidence in Steve Jobs and the senior management team.”

The company admitted that it had falsified records to show that a board meeting on October 19, 2001, had approved the awarding of 7.5 million stock options to Mr Jobs. In fact, no meeting took place on that day and the records were fabricated, the company said.

The market applauded the Apple report, however, and seemed to share the company’s view that Mr Jobs had been exonerated as the shares surged nearly 5 per cent on Wall Street to close at $84.84.

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