There is a bunch of shady and unfair behavior by the acquirers here, but yeah, that line doesn’t make sense. If the options are worthless, then exercising them

There is a bunch of shady and unfair behavior by the acquirers here, but yeah, that line doesn’t make sense. If the options are worthless, then exercising them would have been a waste of money - the CEO was helping this person out! I think this article was written by someone with lots of outrage and little actual understanding.