US software group restates nine years of accounts

BEA, the US-listed business software maker, has been forced into a major accounting restatement going back nearly ten years after a review found that most of the stock options it granted from June 1997 to June 2006 had inappropriate accounting dates and compensation expenses that were not recorded.

The company said it expects to restate financial statements from fiscal 1998 to fiscal 2007, and to record pretax noncash compensation expense of $340m (£170m) to $390m (£195m), with the majority of this expense relating to grants made in the fiscal 1999 to fiscal 2002 period.

A number of top executives, including chief executive Alfred Chuang, have voluntarily agreed to repay all after-tax gains realized as a result of mis-priced options, BEA said.

Further reading:

Backdating comes to the fore