Slashdot Mirror
Half of SCO's Accountants Quit
Groklaw Reader writes "Apparently, SCO's lawyers were working overtime last Sunday, because they wrote a quick plea to the bankruptcy court for permission to hire accounting temps. Why? Approximately half of SCO's finance department has resigned or been fired. Two who resigned had over ten years of experience each. One can only assume that they know what's about to happen to SCO."
I think the biggest worry I have now... which may actually be moot- is who ends up with SCO's assets and IP?
Once they hit chapter 7, as the money runs out, the court will dismember them. Hopefully, the assets they do have end up with IBM.
I'm not so sure about Novell's alignment in the open source world yet.
But even better is this:
If one of their accounting people was a CPA- they could be in deep do do if
there are problems found.
I know this, I'm watching a corporation pull the bond out from under a CPA right
now. The liabilities are incredible and the end game is scary.
Maybe an accountant will have damaging information heh?
Another consultant who stuck it out.
"We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx..."
Something I have not seen mentioned yet is whether SCO needs to accrue an estimate of what they should be paying Novell - whether they have the cash or not, it needs to go on the books. Their current balance sheet does not reflect it, which is probably one reason why the company is still grossly overvalued at $4.72M.
Heck, the accountants probably know that there is no money to pay themselves. So, why work?
Reminds me of a company I once worked for. The accountants (finance people) were sworn to some sort of secrecy not to disclose to other employees what they were doing. Basically only paying accounts when there was dire cause (and in some instances the cheques were immediately pulled from the mail bin and locked in a drawer after the vendor agreed to free things up.) After the fall someone finally told me what was going on. Accountants know the games that are played to keep a semblance of business as usual even when the precipice is looming
Those who stay on risk receiving pay cheques which will not cash.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I wonder what would happen if there were no employees left? What would the bankruptcy judge do?
Palm trees and 8
Not possible. There still would be at least the executive board of the company (CEO, CFO, and whoever else might be on the board of directors). They may be unpaid, but they are in effect the responsible entities for the corporation. By definition (both legally and practically) you cannot have a corporation without an executive board.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
I work in IT at a small company that uses SCO unix on some servers. We configured a new server and had to buy another license about six months ago. (Don't shun me. We also have several linux servers, but this one needed SCO.)
I was on the phone with our vendor and said to him, "We may be the last people to ever buy this."
He replied, "You're probably right."
while I am as glad as most people here about SCO's deserved and inevitable downfall, sometimes I couldn't help thinking whether it would have been better if Novell hadn't stepped into this fight.
Sure, I understand that they are protecting their rights and IP and that they are right to do so. But by pulling the carpet out from under SCO's feet, they also prevented SCO's claims that "millions of lines of codes were copied from UNIX to Linux" being thoroughly tested (and debunked) in court.
I think that it was a good thing that SCO targeted IBM, who 1) had the resources to fight SCO (and their sponsors), and 2) happened to be on the side of Linux developers/users. So it would have been an excellent opportunity to quash this claim once and for all. Despite SCO's bluster and chest-thumping, I think it would have been extremely unlikely for them to be able to convince any person of even limited intelligence of their claims (including Enderle, Didio and O'Gara).
But all we have now is a statement from Novell saying that there is no Unix in Linux. With Novell being so deep in bed with Microsoft, I am slightly nervous with Novell's overall position and and disposition towards Linux.
Still... if you have that many accountants with that much experience quit at the same time then either a) It's their educated opinion that the company won't be able to pay them much longer. or b) They've being asked to do something they consider improper/illegal for the bankruptcy proceedings and decided to get out on the best of possible terms (i.e. other companies won't be afraid they're hiring whistleblowers and SCO will still give them good references).
Let's say you work for a business that used creative accounting and it's going down in a month or so, are you (an accountant) going to wait till the news breaks and then look for another accounting job or are you going to go out and get a job using your current reputation before the public learns the facts.
Not sure if this is the case but even if the accountants had nothing at all to do with it, they'd be Mudd by association of any bad accounting news came out of this.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
Or the three of them were asked to do something illegal or unethical, and declined.
Two resigned, but the third refused to resign -- and was fired.
Some people don't maintain bank accounts. Strange but true. Reasons are varied and none of them are my own. Poll the lineup at the local 24x7 "Money Mart" type store and ask them.
My grandmother is a case in point. She was 21 when the stock market crashed in 1929. Her father, my great-grandfather, was a very successful business man. By 1933 all the banks he banked with had gone under and they were pennyless and homeless. When my grandmother died in 1968 we found $70,000 stashed around her house. In a safe, in hollowed out books, in the walls (I shit you not). She never trusted banks after the depression and never put a penny into one again. I can't count the number of times I've heard this from people about their grandparents.
There is no legal downside to owing the stock, but getting it in the form of certificates would cost more than the 22 cents each share is worth. Normally, shareholders leave the shares on deposit with a broker. A year or two ago someone on the Yahoo board itemized the cost of having stock certificates issued, and I seem to remember it being something like $40/certificate. If you had 100 shares, you would normally receive one certificate for the shares, although you could request multiple certificates for a total of the 100 shares.
These shares are not worth the paper they are printed on.
I work in bizdev at an IT services firm (I used to be a sysadmin, but needed some new challenges and a job that had nearly unlimited earning potential). My boss and I wanted to start targeting SCO's customers to switch them all over to Linux and provide support to them. The only problem: all of the customers that SCO lists on their site are either out of business, or have obviously switched over to Linux already, or are in far away countries where we don't have a presence. It's damn near impossible to find anyone still running any of their software, my guess is Novell and/or RedHat made the same overtures we were planning on doing, but much sooner than we did.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
First, the "millions" that Darl was paid were bonuses for good performance - but it turns out that the money they counted didn't actually belong to SCOX, so it wasn't profit... meaning that the bankruptcy trustee will ask for it back.
Second, as the money is part of the converted funds (ie., it belongs to Novell) the bankruptcy court can (and probably will) order Darl to turn it over. (If you rob a bank, then give the money to someone else, do they get to keep it?)
There is a very real possibility that Darl and Kevin will be personally on the hook for money owed to Novell.
Back in the day, my accounting 410 prof told us that it is a common tactic in troubled financial times to fire your accountants, and then have your lawyer hire them back. That way, management's interactions with them become privileged communication, and not admissible in court. Perhaps the Country Lawyer could weigh in on this.
I was taught to respect my elders. The trouble is, it's getting harder and harder to find some.
You can find that on the CV of a lot of security researchers, actually. But it's a given. You don't take a SR serious if he doesn't have it on his CV, not having it only means you never worked in the field.
What's 10 times harder is to find an 80x86 Assembler guru with good knowledge of malware and a clean police record...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Dunno about USA, I'm guessing worker-protection laws are lax ?
In Norway there's no particular reason not to work for a company that is in danger of collapsing. There is mandatory insurance for outstanding pay for everyone that is not part of management for a period of up to 3 months.
There is also an exception from normal bankruptcy law for nonpaid wages. Normally if you file to have a company bankrupted, there's an associated fee. That is to discourage annoyance-filings and bankruptcies over details (they owe us $120, it's two days past due, let's file for their bankruptcy to get their attention kind of thinking), if you're owed wages though, the fee is waived.
So, in effect, if your paycheck is 1 day late, you can file for having the employer liquidated. You can do so at -zero- cost to yourself, and unpaid wages are priority one in the assets, paid before debts etc.
And even if there is nothing of value in the company, so the company won't be able to cover the debts, the insurance kicks in, you're guaranteed pay -- aslong as you didn't let the late paycheck slide for more than 3 months. In other words, when your *third* paycheck is late, it's time to get active, or accept the risk you'll never see that money.
If the company neglected to pay for wage-insurance, you *still* get the money, the only difference, from your POV is that in this case the officers of the company gets criminal charges slapped additionally.
Probably not, Novell would be an unsecured creditor. So the secured creditors get paid out first. And of course the Boies slime machine has tried to make itself first in line to be paid.
That said, the lawyers took the case on a contingency basis, SCO is now in bankruptcy so the contract with the lawyers can be voided just like any other supplier. The judgement won by Novell has established that SCO does not hold the copyrights to UNIX as they claimed, so what does SCO actually have?
It is hard to see any other law firm wanting to buy SCO's assets out of bankruptcy to continue the lawsuit. So the only likely bidders for SCO's assets are IBM, Novell and Boies. At this point it must be pretty clear to Boies that the case is lost and all they can hope to collect is at best some nuisance money from IBM. IBM has no incentive to pay since there is a court judgement to the effect that any money owed belongs to Novell.
My guess is that we won't know what is going to happen till we see what the liabilities are and which ones the judge will allow to be cancelled.
Can't see the judge being too impressed by McBride's reorganization plan. The purpose of Chapter 11 is to keep a company in business. SCO does not have a business, all they have is a lawsuit which the largest creditor wants to see ended.
I remain entirely unimpressed by Boies legal skills. He botched the Florida recount. He made idiotic arguments in Napster and SCO vs IBM that never had a chance of success. In the Microsoft case he essentially handed ultimate victory to Redmond by leading Jackson into a whole series of decisions which a competent lawyer would have realized were certain to backfire at appeal. He fought the case on entirely the wrong set of claims. He should have worked out that Clark and McNeil were looking for an alibi for their own poor management. Netscape's treatment of Spyglass in particular was just as predatory as anything Microsoft was acused of. If Boies had been the legal genius he was cracked up to be he would have taken a very different path.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/