Patent ID: RE43986

Claim:
A method for estimating an expense of employee stock option grants, the method comprising: providing tracking instruments that give holders of the tracking instruments rights to future payments proportional to a value, if any, actually realized by grantees of the employee stock options upon exercising the employee stock options, wherein the rights to future payments are independent of current holders of the tracking instruments such that each current holder of one or more of the tracking instruments respectively receives a pro rata share of a predetermined portion of the net value of the employee stock options actually realized as the grantees of the employee stock options exercise their respective employee stock options; storing information about the tracking instruments in a tracking instrument database of an auction system, the auction system including a processor to communicate with one or more investor systems through a network; electronically auctioning, using the processor of the auction system, the tracking instruments to bidders through a website, wherein the auction system receives bids from the one or more investor systems through the network during the electronic auctioning of the tracking instruments; and deriving the expense of granting the employee stock options from a price paid by the bidders for the tracking instruments.