Answered By: Peter Z McKay
Last Updated: Oct 29, 2014     Views: 1043

  • Answer: PricewaterhouseCoopers
  • "Bristol-Myers Says Accounting Was 'Inappropriiate', Inflated Sales."
    By Gardiner Harris
    The Wall Street Journal, March 11, 2003, p.A2.
    The release comes three months after The Wall Street Journal detailed in a page-one article a variety of accounting irregularities at the company since 1997. At the time, John Skule, a Bristol-Myers spokesman, said that "it's simply untrue that the company used earnings management to obscure the true state of the company." But the restatement suggests that earnings management is precisely what Bristol-Myers's top executives were doing for years.By far the biggest of these management moves were incentives that Bristol-Myers offered to McKesson Corp. and Cardinal Health Inc., two big wholesalers, to buy more products than needed to meet patient demand. And although Bristol-Myers had previously estimated that it could work down the inventory by the end of March, the company is now saying that it will need until the end of 2003 to complete the job. Bristol-Myers said it still had at the end of last year as much as $570 million in excess inventory at wholesalers.PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP has been Bristol-Myers's auditor for years. Considering the many accounting irregularities that Bristol-Myers has acknowledged, one analyst asked Mr. [Andrew Bonfield] whether the company should consider switching auditors. "I'm not going to comment on that," Mr. Bonfield said. A spokesman for PricewaterhouseCoopers declined to comment.

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