Now Xerox? Jesus

[Mark Asher]

"Xerox Corp. improperly booked nearly $2 billion in revenue over the past five years, the company said Friday, as the copier maker was forced to restate earnings to reflect $1.4 billion less in pre-tax profits during the period.

"The downward adjustments are actually less than misstatements cited by the Securities and Exchange Commission in April, when it filed civil fraud charges against the copier company. At that time, the SEC charged that Xerox's accounting accelerated the company's recognition of equipment revenue by more than $3 billion, and increased its pre-tax earnings by about $1.5 billion, between the years 1997 and 2000, rather than through 2001. Xerox agreed to pay a $10 million penalty under an agreement with the SEC at that time."

http://money.cnn.com/2002/06/28/news/companies/xerox/index.htm

I guess it's not as bad as Enron and World Com, but man, when's it going to end?

You'd think Xerox would have some top-secret room where they they use experimental Xerox machines to photocopy money or something. :wink:

[Anonymous]

This isn't as big a deal because this was exposed by the SEC earlier this year... they just told Xerox to restate their earnings and what Xerox came up with is what the SEC came up with.

So, in terms of news, this isn't a bombshell.

Also, if you read Xerox's statements, they actually have better results with the restatement than before; they lost money in 97 and 98, but rebounded in 99 and 2000.

Still, Xerox has a really dismal future ahead of it; copy machines are no longer big-ticket items and are rapidly becoming dinosaurs, and Xerox has something like $18 billion in debt and shrinking revenue, which means they are rapidly coming to a point where they won't be able to service their debt.

[Alan Au]

It was known that Xerox was in financial trouble long before this (e.g. at least a year ago).

- Alan