iSoft in £174m overstatement

iSoft Group has re-stated three years of results showing a loss of £382.25m
for the year ended April 2006, and admitting that £174m had been recognised too
early.

The company announced long awaited results today, including significant
revisions as a result of an investigation into its revenue recognition policies.
In a futher twist, however, auditors Deloitte are not signing off today’s
numbers.

The company announced results, for the first time reported under IFRS and
under its new revenue recognition policy, but auditors Deloitte have declared
they are unable to give an opinion as to whether the financial statements give a
true and fair view of the accounts.

The company, at the centre of the health services multi-billion pound
overhaul, is under investigation by the Financial Services Authority, it said
yesterday.

The FT reported this morning that the markets regulator was looking at the
group for ‘issuing potentially misleading statements to the market’.

In the last month the company confirmed that a provisional inquiry by its
auditors Deloitte had unearthed accounting irregularities for its 2004 and 2005
accounts as revenues for both these years were presented in the accounts sooner
than they should have been.

The group said today: ‘The accounting policy restatement has involved
reversing revenues of £76m, £54m and £44m (total: £174m)’ recognized in the
previous three years.

It added: ‘the independent auditors have been unable to give an opinion as to
whether the financial statements give a true and fair view in respect of the
accounts for the year ended 30 April 2006 and the comparative figures for the
year ended 30 April 2005.’

The events in recent months were triggered by the need to issue a trading
statement in January 2006, warning of a sharp reduction in revenues and profits
for the year end 2006.

In his report, the chairman, John Weston, has attributed this to delivery and
implementation delays of the NHS project, among the largest IT overhaul projects
in the world.