New Qwest CEO Ed Mueller will resign from the chairmanship of VeriSign, where he's been helping the company overcome a stock-option backdating scandal.

By leaving the company's board, Mueller is extracting himself from the most-time-consuming of his four board seats. He also serves on the boards of Clorox and GSC Acquisition Co., as well as a California winery run by a friend.

Qwest named Mueller, 60, as chief executive Sunday. He replaces Dick Notebaert, who's retiring.

The question of Mueller's board commitments came up in his first conference call with Qwest analysts. He promised Monday he would "review that immediately . . . but first and foremost, my job is to be here at Qwest, so any - outside boards are good, they just take a lot of time. So I will evaluate that quickly and efficiently."

Mueller joined the board and audit comittee of Mountain View, Calif.-based VeriSign, a network-infrastructure company, in March 2005. Mueller was chief executive of retailer Williams-Sonoma at the time.

In May 2006, the Center for Financial Research and Analysis identified VeriSign as one of 15 public companies with suspicious stock-option grants in the period between 1997 and 2002.

The report came as investors in numerous companies were learning about options "backdating."

Options allow the holder to purchase stock in the future at an "exercise" price, which is typically set at the market value on the day the option is issued. But a "backdated" option has a false grant date, selected with the benefit of hindsight for a time when the stock's market value was low.

After the research report, VeriSign's board began reviewing its history of stock-option grants.

A grand jury subpoena from the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California and a formal order of investigation from the Securities and Exchange Commission followed.

In May of this year, Chairman and CEO Stratton Sclavos resigned, and the board elected Mueller as chairman.

Ultimately, the company found 8,164 stock- option grants made on 41 dates between January 1998 and May 2006 that had problems with the exercise price.

In an interview with the Rocky on Tuesday, Mueller referred to his work on some of his boards as "fun," but did admit that "VeriSign was not as fun."

VeriSign acknowledged Muller's pending resignation in a regulatory filing today, but offered no further comment.

VeriSign Inc.

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Finance Editor David Milstead can be reached at milstead@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2648.