Ace Hardware suffered $152 million accounting mistake
Posted January 11, 2008 10:00 pm
Officials of Ace Hardware say they have discovered that a mid-level employee at the chain's Oak Brook headquarters made innocent but enormously expensive and incorrect entries in ledger books that eventually led to a $152 million accounting error.
Ace CEO Ray Griffith said yesterday that the poorly trained employee, who worked in the finance department, is no longer employed at Ace Hardware.
The accounting error was first revealed last summer, and Griffith says Ace will be forced to restate its earnings for fiscal years 2004, 2005 and 2006. It will also correct its numbers for fiscal 2007.
Griffith says the five-month internal investigation of the errors cost $10 million.
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