CA Share Price Falls In Wake Of Resignations

CA CFO Ira Zar, Senior Vice President of Finance Lloyd Silverstein and Vice President of Finance David Rivard submitted their resignations after the release of a preliminary report by an independent auditor, said CEO and chairman Sanjay Kumar late Wednesday.

The audit, authorized by the company's board of directors, comes amid a joint investigation by the U.S. Attorney's office and the Securities and Exchange Commission into whether company executives manipulated revenue to boost the company's stock price. The probe concerns whether the company improperly back-dated and forward-dated customer contracts to shift revenue between fiscal quarters.

The independent preliminary report found that a number of software contracts in the fiscal year ending on March 31, 2000, were signed after the end of the quarter but appeared in the company's books as if they had been signed before then.

Walter P. Schuetze, an outside director and former SEC chief accountant who conducted the independent review, said the contracts should have been reflected in the financial records of the quarter in which they were signed. But he said there was no evidence to suggest that the revenue from the contracts was not genuine.

In the interim, Douglas Robinson was named senior vice president of finance.

CA shares fell $1.96 to $27 in morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

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