RSSDell: 'Evidence of Misconduct' in Financial Reports
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published March 29, 2007, 6:06 PM
In an acknowledgment this afternoon that the worst may yet come to pass, Dell Computer stated its audit committee looking into irregularities in its financial reporting in advance of an SEC investigation, "has identified a number of accounting errors, evidence of misconduct, and deficiencies in the financial control environment."
As a result, the company may be venturing into dangerous territory further than any other US publicly traded company has gone before, by stating now it doubts it will be able to file its annual 10-K report for the last fiscal year even by the typical extended deadline of April 18, were it to ask for an extension.
In a statement this afternoon, the audit committee's chairperson, Thomas Luce, said, "As we move toward the conclusion of our investigation, we are committing the time and resources required to ensure a thorough and comprehensive review and resolution of all identified issues and the implementation of appropriate remedial measures."
Two months ago, Dell CEO Kevin Rollins resigned, and founder Michael Dell returned to his old seat, ostensibly to purge the ills that have plagued his company. He's looking to build what he calls "Dell 2.0," though he's familiar enough with the development process to know that he may have to spend a lot of time debugging his predecessor's version 1.1.
A lawsuit brought by Dell's investors against the company last month alleges that Rollins was personally involved in a scheme to artificially inflate the value of the company, using as much as $1 billion in kickbacks that shareholders believe came from Intel, paying Dell back for its once-exclusive purchases of Intel CPUs.
Intel has flatly denied the allegations, saying they appear completely made up; although Dell Computer has yet to address these allegations specifically. It's against this backdrop that Dell's acknowledged "evidence of misconduct" appears most daunting.
The late news sent Dell's stock value down as much as 7%, before it bounced back in after-hours trading.
If this is true, not only is Dell in some deep...stuff...but Intel may be up to their neck in the 2007 equivalent of the game show and music biz payola scandal.
Sounds like fun times ahead!
Oh, and an HP? oooooh...
Get a MacBook Pro and have the option of what OS to run with VMWare. Expand your options instead of simply trading them for another brand of essentially the same thing with just as lousy support. But you DO get your choice of accents...do you prefer Indian or Phillipino? Unfortunately they are all still named "Bob" and "Jane" - very popular Indian names...
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|Stupid, ininformed people who don't know crap about computers line up like sheep to buy that Inspiron 1200, which is now 4 years old and still has the same specs except a slightly larger hard drive.
The trapezoidal touch pad and overall s***ty look and feel make it a winner because people don't know what a piece of s*** they will send their kid off to college with until it shows up at your door.
Good luck installing the 20+ drivers you need when it's time to reformat. The display doesnt even work until you find all the correct drivers from Dell and install them properly which 1 in 100 can actually do.
My company offered me a free 17" Dell notebook, I declined and bought my own loaded HP with Vista Platinum, all the toys 120GB HD, 2GB of RAM, DL DVD burner, LightScribe, built in web cam, etc.. for 1200 bucks.
As you can see, I actually put my money where my mouth is when it comes to refusing to use crap, even if it's free.
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|Wow... that must make you an HP Lemming...
/rollseyes
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|I declined and bought my own loaded HP with Vista Platinum,
What *is* this Vista Platinum you speak of? :p
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|Short this stock and/or buy HP. Surest bet: an HP slightly out of money Leap.
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|Their marketing sucks and you can buy a better computer from Walmart to. I guess now they can tell their stockholders as well as their customers "Dude you got Delled!"
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|BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAAAAAAHHAAHAHAAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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