Word: sec
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...company fired its longtime chief financial officer, Scott Sullivan, 40, and is turning over its findings to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC has filed fraud charges and is launching an investigation--as is the Justice Department, at least two congressional committees and the state of Mississippi, where WorldCom is based. All current and former employees, along with WorldCom's ex-accounting firm, Arthur Andersen, have been ordered to refrain from Enron-like paper shredding. Investigators are especially eager to hear from WorldCom founder Bernie Ebbers, who resigned as CEO in April, not long after it was revealed that...
...Xerox restated $6.4 billion in revenues dating to 1997. A restatement had been expected under an agreement Xerox reached with the SEC three months ago, over the company's practice of immediately booking revenue from long-term leases of copiers and other equipment. But the amount turned out to be more than triple what investors had expected and sparked a 13% sell-off of Xerox's stock...
...apples and oranges," insists Communications Director Dan Bartlett comparing the accounting practices at WorldCom and Enron and those that led to a 1990 SEC investigation and restatement of Harken's earnings. The distinction, say administration officials, is not only that Harken's restatement was in millions, not billions, but also that the company was merely caught being aggressive, not fraudulent. Many corporate executives currently under the bright lights are saying a version of the same thing...
...Democrats have been working hard to draw the parallels and revive interest in another SEC investigation in which Bush was cleared of trading on inside information twelve years ago when he sold stock two months before the company announced a large loss and its stock price sank. White House aides insist none of the recent questions about the president's past have affected his policy or the speech outlining it, but the dustup has annoyed a Bush team always nervous that voters might turn their anger about corporate fraud on a president who is proud of his business-friendly posture...
...tech solution to the high-tech problem of the cell-phone battery that dies without a car or a wall plug in sight. Motorola's FreeCharge windup charger ($80; available this summer) lets you generate electricity with your upper-body strength. Just crank the handle for 30 sec., and the charger converts that mechanical energy into enough juice to power a cell phone for five minutes. Special adapters that fit other popular phones are sold separately...