Good old-fashioned incompetence behind $152 million restatement

US company Ace Hardware had to restate its fiscal earnings for the last four years this week after it discovered the reconciliation skills of one of its mid-level accountants was not ace at all. The inability of a single employee to correctly reconcile inventory to general ledger resulted in a net restatement of $152 million, and a five month investigation costed at $10 million.

Chief executive Ray Griffith said the individual responsible had been “poorly trained”, and no longer worked at the firm. The employee in question had worked for the firm for eight years.

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