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Coudersport, Pa. (June 11, 2002) -- Troubled cable company Adelphia Communications Corp. has fired its auditor Deloitte & Touche, reportedly over failing to tell the company about shady accounting practices.The firm didn't disclose the reason it axed Deloitte in an 8-K filed Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission, but noted that information regarding the termination would be disclosed in subsequent filings. Published reports say the firm was fired for allegedly failing to inform Adelphia about questionable accounting practices.
Adelphia said it still is looking for a successor to Deloitte. According to the filing, the company also expects to cut its reported 2000 and 2001 revenue and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) and its estimates for 2002 EBITDA growth. The firm decreased its estimate for the number of basic cable subscribers as of Dec. 31, 2001 to 5,763,000, from the previously reported 5,810,253.
Meanwhile, board members Scott Schneider and Leonard Tow, reportedly the company's largest shareholders outside of the founding Rigas family, resigned from the board of the nation's sixth-largest cable television company Monday, citing the "unreliability of corporate data." In a letter dated June 10 to Adelphia chairman and chief executive Erland Kailbourne, Tow and Schneider resigned, citing "revelations of the unreliability of corporate data as well as the ongoing serial disclosures of wrongdoing," which they said "made it impossible to contribute meaningfully to the process" of restoring the company's credibility and stabilizing it financially.
Adelphia was delisted from the Nasdaq stock market last week after failing to file its 2001 annual report by the end of May.
-- Electronic Accountant Newswire staff
