VideoXerox Corp., which is facing a criminal probe of its accounting practices, on Friday reassigned its treasurer to the company's unit in Canada.
The copier company's management said Gregory B. Tayler, a Canadian, has accepted a position at Xerox Canada, effective immediately.
Chief financial officer Lawrence A. Zimmerman will assume the role of treasurer in an acting capacity until a new treasurer is named.
Tayler is one of a number of Xerox executives who have been named in shareholder class-action lawsuits.
Xerox spokeswoman Christa Carone declined to comment on whether the move was related to any of those suits, according to wire service reports. She reportedly said Tayler was successful in refinancing the company's credit line and has extensive experience in the company's Canadian operations.
"Greg is moving into a role that brings him back home and leverages his vast expertise in Xerox's Canadian business," Carone told the Associated Press.
Indeed, after he joined Xerox in 1991, Tayler, a Canadian citizen, held several senior finance positions in operations and planning in Xerox Canada. He then moved to the finance department at the company's headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut, where he held the position of controller. Last year, Tayler was promoted to corporate treasurer.
Still, the reassignment of Xerox's onetime controller will surely raise some eyebrows. As controller, Tayler was likely in charge of the company's accounting. And as CFO.com reported last week, the U.S. Attorney's office in Bridgeport, Connecticut, is currently investigating Xerox's past accounting practices. While the nature—or targets—of the investigation remain unclear, it appears that the criminal probe covers years when Tayler was overseeing the company's bookkeeping.
On April 11, Xerox concluded a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission related to accounting matters that had been under investigation since June 2000.
Under the terms of the settlement, the company restated its financials for the years 1997 through 2000 and adjusted its previously announced 2001 results. It also paid a $10 million fine.
According to a Wall Street Journal report last week, the SEC told certain Xerox employees, including Tayler, that they could face civil charges for their alleged roles in artificially inflating the company's revenues.
Xerox has already removed Tayler's name and biography from the list of corporate officers on its home page.
(Editor's note: Xerox's next treasurer might look at the CFO PeerMetrix interactive scorecards to see how rival Pitney Bowes manages AP/AR.)
FT: Fastow Charges Expected Wednesday
The Feds are closing in on former Enron chief financial officer Andrew Fastow.
Fastow could be charged as early as this Wednesday for his alleged role in the energy trader's accounting scandal, which led to the company's bankruptcy filing, according to ft.com, the Web site for the Financial Times, citing lawyers involved in the case.
Fastow's freedom has seemed to be in serious jeopardy since last month, when Michael Kopper, who worked closely with Fastow, pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy in U.S. District Court in Houston.
As CFO.com reported then, the court documents submitted by the SEC and the Justice Department never cited Fastow by name. But the SEC and DOJ did provide an alarming amount of detail about the alleged manipulation of the company's finances by the figure the documents simply call "The Enron CFO."
The criminal charges are expected to accuse Fastow of serving as the architect of the off-balance-sheet partnerships that brought the company down, according to ft.com.
Prosecutors are expected to charge Fastow with accepting kickbacks from Kopper for his role in Chewco, the controversial partnerships set up by Fastow in 1997 to help keep some of Enron's assets and liabilities off the company's balance sheet.
Kopper has admitted he received about $1.5 million in "management fees" for running Chewco. He claims he shared the payments with Fastow, his boss.
The Underfunded Pension Fund Crisis
If you live by the equity markets, you die by the equity markets.
This is what a large majority of investors have painfully learned in the past couple of years, as the great stock market bubble of the late 1990s burst. That bursting has dramatically reduced the value of many investors' portfolios, including 401(k) retirement plans.
It's not surprising, then, that defined benefit (DB) pension plans are also suffering during the market downturn. According to Merrill Lynch, a number of very large companies will have to make multi-billion-dollar deposits into their pension plans to shore up this shortfall. That shoring up will likely cut into earnings and cash flow.
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