The PC maker is shedding staff and writing off assets.
French prosecutors began a probe into allegations of accounting irregularities at Vivendi in 2000-01 Jean-Marie Messieressits, its former boss, after a complaint by a shareholder group.See article: France's backward mobile-phone marketQwest Communications said that it would write off assets to the tune of $35 billion to erase the last vestiges of the telecoms boom from its balance sheet.
Much of that will cover severance costs for workers who leave, while $175 million will go toward closing factories and writing off assets.
Instant camera maker Polaroid prd said it would cut up to 700 jobs, or about 7% of its payroll, and take a $90 million charge in the fourth quarter to cover the costs of writing off assets and expanding a restructuring program.
Writing off assets like account receivables and inventory can kill a business, or at the very least damage it.
"There's a good chance that G.E. has already encouraged them to write off obsolete assets, take restructuring charges and end unprofitable customer relationships," said Mr. Ghriskey of Dreyfus.
"We're not saying we're not going to do these at all in the future, but in [these] three cases at least, it didn't work the way we had hoped it to work, and we decided to move on and basically write off those assets".
Turnaround Artist Manual - Chapter 1: Walk in with a frown; blame your predecessor; slash projects, budgets, people; lower expectations, loudly; and write-off assets.
In the fiscal year ended March, four new "megabanks" and five other big lenders wrote off 4.3 trillion yen $35.7 billionn) in nonperforming assets, more than double the 1.66 trillion yen $13.8 billionn) they forecast a year ago.
UBS, the largest Swiss bank and the largest in Europe in terms of assets, wrote off $13.7 billion in soured American investments, mostly in subprime loans.
