Huron shares plummet amid accounting scandal

Subject: Huron shares plummet amid accounting scandal Tue Aug 04, 2009 4:08 am

CHICAGO, Aug 3 (Reuters) - Huron Consulting Group Inc (HURN.O), which helps clients dodge accounting pitfalls and stay on the right side of the law, faced its own corporate meltdown on Monday sparked by a bookkeeping scandal that wiped more than two-thirds from its market value.

Chicago-based Huron, which rose in 2002 from the ashes of collapsed accounting giant Arthur Andersen, said late on Friday that its entire top management team would leave the company and that it would restate more than three years of results.

The company's earnings for that period would be slashed almost in half because it had misreported costs related to acquisitions.

"As a professional services company with a relatively high amount of debt, it is not implausible to argue that this event causes the company to languish for an extended period of time or eventually unravel," said Timothy McHugh, an analyst at William Blair & Company, which owns 2.54 percent of Huron's shares according to Reuters Knowledge.

Huron stock closed down 69.13 percent at $13.69 on Nasdaq, wiping $660 million off its market value.

http://www.reuters.com/article/wtUSInvestingNews/idINBNG45889420090804

Huron shares plummet amid accounting scandal

Huron shares plummet amid accounting scandal

Anarcho-Capitalist Categorical Imperatives

AnCaps' Laissez-faire Free Trade Zone