Bad Books at Microsoft

An Anonymous Coward wrote in with a fascinating story about Microsoft allegedly defrauding its stockholders and the SEC, and firing a superb-by-their-own-admission auditor. It'll be interesting to see how this ends. Of course, Microsoft denying any wrong doing is the short version. Update: 01/23 10:21 by S : Link Moved.

Comments

Widely held view...

[freejack]

Mark Anderson a great industry analyst that writes a newsletter called Strategic News Service went on the record on March 4, 1998 saying

"Microsoft is just making more money than they can hide.

I've been on the record for a couple of years now, claiming that MS has so
much cash socked away that they can produce any financial results they want
to quarter by quarter.


Picture a bunch of shoe boxes in the back of Billg's office -- no, that's
too small. Picture a bunch of dumpsters in the basement of Building 8 on
the MS Redmond campus, all of them brand new and lined up, numbered, and
locked. Inside, picture compact stacks of thousand-dollar bills, each
dumpster filled to the very top, and the whole basement full of these, with
just a small maze-like walkway space left, just wide enough to get a small
handcart to any or all of these little green private banks.

You'll notice that Billg announced an increase in R and D expenditures last
week, from $2.9B to $4.9B or so. Big hit to earnings, right? You see,
they have run out of space in Building 8's basement ---

Of course, I am only half kidding.

It is really hard to hide that much money."

His comments were of course not issued in the context of the GAAP/SEC violations, but his views have become widely held in the industry.

Now we get to sit back and watch the circus come to town (or perhaps leave town if the allegations are un-provable)