SiliconBeat

Give the accounting firm Deloitte an A for promptness. We received an e-mail from the company with “President-elect Obama and Tax Policy” in the subject field that included a link to its paper titled “Tax Policy Decisions Ahead: President-elect Obama’s Call for Change”.

Noting that most serious observers of Washington “had long since concluded that the tax and spending commitments of the United States are unsustainable beyond the end of the next decade” when the presidential campaign began in earnest in the Spring of 2007, Deloitte reminds us that a few things have happened since, particularly in the last several weeks. Namely, ”a significant economic downturn and extraordinary government spending associated with efforts to promote recovery may have accelerated the potential day of reckoning.” Oh, right. (Wall Street, which seemed to have forgotten about that yesterday, remembered today.)

Deloitte says that the campaign “seems to have given structure to the debate over spending and taxes in four important respects:” Read the rest of this entry »

A week after performing a nearly complete makeover of its executive suite, Cadence Design (Nasdaq: CDNS)  said today that “it is reviewing, in conjunction with the company’s independent accountants and legal advisors, the recognition of revenue related to customer contracts signed during the first quarter of 2008.”

Cadence accountants happened to notice that $24 million of contract revenue in its recently completed third quarter was already recognized during its first quarter of the year. Oops. That already-recognized revenue should “have been recognized Read the rest of this entry »

Silicon Graphics filed details of the size of discretionary bonuses made to some of its executives that we previously wrote about. Chief Executive Robert Ewald was given control of doling out awards from a $3.44 million bonus pool to select employees. (Ewald himself got a $150,000 bonus awarded to him in late August.) The bonuses were awarded even though none of the company’s performance-based incentives were issued based on its results in fiscal 2008, which ended in June.

Douglas Britt, the company’s senior vice president for sales, received the biggest cash payment: Read the rest of this entry »

Well, that didn’t take very long.

Within a month of departing VeriFone after completing that company’s restatement of results from fiscal 2007 that lopped off $70 million worth of profits because of “material weaknesses” in the company’s financial reporting process, ex-CFO Barry Zwarenstein re-surfaced Wednesday as the new chief financial officer at Smart Modular Technologies.

We previously wrote about Zwarenstein’s separation agreement which, among other things, guaranteed that the only information VeriFone would give to any prospective employers doing background checks in the future would be Read the rest of this entry »

VeriFone Holdings, the San Jose supplier of electronic payment systems that last month completed a restatement of several quarters of financials since 2007 that lopped off $70 million worth of previous profits, named Silicon Valley veteran Bob Dykes (pictured) to help leads its “continued growth and stability,” according to a press release Tuesday afternoon.

Dykes, a 30-year financial veteran who has served as CFO at major valley companies such as Read the rest of this entry »

San Jose storage supplier Quantum said it dismissed Ernst & Young as its principal independent accountant last Friday and hired PricewaterhouseCoopers to replace them, according to a regulatory filing Wednesday.

Quantum cited no reason for the change, and said that none of its financial statements over the past two fiscal years contained any adverse opinion from Ernst & Young.

Shareholders of Credence Systems, the Milpitas maker of semiconductor design-and-testing gear, and its competitor LTX of Norwood, Mass., are set to vote Thursday on the proposed merger of the two companies.

On Monday, holders of Credence’s 3.5% Convertible Senior Subordinated Notes due 2010 threw the company a curveball after they sent Credence a letter saying that the proposed merger would “constitute a change of control” requiring Credence to “offer to repurchase all of the outstanding Notes (due in 2010) at 100% of the principal amount thereof plus accrued and unpaid interest,” according to an SEC filing Tuesday.

Credence and LTX are now “reviewing and considering the positions taken in the letter” but assured investors that the $156 million it holds in cash and cash equivalents, combined with $71.5 million held by LTX would be sufficient to meet its obligation, if the merger is found to be a change of control.

Tuesday was Barry Zwarenstein’s last day as chief financial officer at VeriFone Holdings, the same day the company officially wiped out $70 million in past profits when it filed amended financial statements with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

In December the San Jose-based electronic payments company shocked investors when it said it had miscalculated its costs for inventory, manufacturing and distribution in its previous three quarterly reports.

In April, VeriFone’s board completed its investigation into the matter, an effort involving some 70 professionals and forensic accountants, Read the rest of this entry »

General counsels of several Silicon Valley corporations are in the vanguard of critics railing against changes being proposed by the Financial Accounting Standards Board “”that would force public companies to disclose more about the risks of litigation,” judging by the sources in this story by Zusha Elinson of the San Francisco Recorder.

“Under the revised rules for FASB Statement No. 5,” Elinson writes, “the threshold for reporting the potential loss from a lawsuit would be lowered from ‘probable’ to Read the rest of this entry »

Disk-drive maker Seagate Technology said it will spend $21 million to give severance to about 570 employees who will lose their jobs when it closes its media manufacturing facility in Milpitas as of Oct. 3, according to a filing with the SEC today. That works out to an average of $36,800 per employee, were all employees equal. Obviously, final results will vary. The layoffs represent about 1 percent of Seagate’s global workforce

Seagate, which maintains U.S. headquarters in Scotts Valley but is based in the Cayman Islands, estimates the move will cost it Read the rest of this entry »