CHICAGO (Reuters) — Monster Worldwide Inc., parent company of the leading jobs website, said its founder, Andrew McKelvey, had resigned from its board of directors after refusing to be interviewed for the company’s internal stock option investigation.McKelvey also stepped down as Monster’s chairman emeritus, a position he assumed after giving up the chief executive and chairman jobs earlier this month amid the options review. Shares of Monster rose more than three percent on the news.

McKelvey, Monster’s largest individual shareholder, declined to be interviewed yesterday for the probe as scheduled and would not say if or when he would meet with them, his attorney said in a letter to the law firm investigating the issue for Monster.

McKelvey’s attorney, Steven Reich, also said the 71-year-old executive was jet lagged, recovering from illness and was unprepared when he spoke to the company in July on the options issue.

One attorney who specialises in boardroom matters said McKelvey’s exit was the only option.

“In this case, when you have a board member who is going to refuse to talk, his only responsible choice really is to resign,” said Mary Ann Jorgenson, a partner at law firm Squire Sanders & Dempsey in Cleveland.

“I understand that he has legal issues, but the world, the market, would certainly consider it a negative situation for him to remain as a director,” she added.

More than 140 companies have internal investigations under way or are the subject of federal probes into possible manipulation of stock option dates.

With so many companies under scrutiny, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is relying to some extent on internal company reviews when deciding whether to investigate further. The results of in-house probes are being handed over to the SEC, which reviews the findings.

In the letter to Monster’s law firm, Reich, who was recently hired, cancelled yesterday’s meeting between McKelvey and a board committee formed to address the backdating issue, citing a need for more time to study documents.

Reich also said McKelvey misunderstood questions he was asked by company officials in the July meeting, did not have an attorney with him and had not taken the time to reconstruct events spanning many years. In March, McKelvey was hospitalised for pneumonia.

“In looking back on that session, it is now clear to Mr. McKelvey that he did not express his thoughts and recollections as clearly or accurately as he would have liked,” Reich wrote in the letter, a copy of which was filed with the SEC.

Reich said McKelvey was asked questions in July that he understood were meant to assess whether people in the company had improperly backdated stock options and whether he knew such actions were improper when they occurred.

“In retrospect, he recognises that he misunderstood your questions and focused too narrowly on the issue of whether he knew at the time that improper conduct had occurred, and not on the more general issue of whether backdating had occurred,” Reich wrote about McKelvey.

“During the time period relevant to your questions, he did not understand that it was improper for the exercise price of stock options to be different than the price on the grant dates, nor did he understand that there were legal or accounting implications associated with that difference,” Reich added.