For the third week in a row week in a row, an executive has been fired from a Canadian technology company during an earnings revision.
This time it occurred at video-game maker Hip Interactive Corp. The company announced that the senior vice president of finance of its video-game-distribution division had been terminated. Hip Interactive didn’t identify the executive by name.
The announcement came as the Toronto-based company said it was cutting its previously announced earnings expectation for the fiscal year ended March 31 by about $2.9 million after tax, or 5 cents per share. The restatement will come as the result of “certain accounting errors recently uncovered and arising in the second and third quarter of the current year,” according to the company.
The company added that certain accounting entries involving the video-game-distribution division lacked enough supporting documentation. Hip stressed that management immediately reported its findings to the board of directors, which ordered its audit committee to launch an investigation of the accounting entries in question. PricewaterhouseCoopers will assist in the review, according to the company.
Last week, Canadian software company Descartes Systems Group fired its chief executive officer and president Manuel Pietra and warned that its first-quarter loss would be “materially” worse than expected previous forecasts and that revenues would be lower than expected. Chief financial officer Brandon Nussey and Art Mesher, executive vice president of Strategic Development, will together form the office of the chief executive officer while the company searches for a new CEO. They will report to the board.
Descartes has had trouble collecting on its bills, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region. The company stated that it “believes that it may be necessary to take provisions for accounts receivable and adjustments to related revenue and expenses, and provisions for certain other assets, in addition to those reflected in its unaudited financial statements” released in March.
Late last month, too, Nortel Networks Corp. fired its CEO and two top finance executives and announced plans to restate 2003 earnings downward by 50 percent.
