A Taste of Wellness for Savoury and Snacks
Givaudan
The New York stock exchange was hit by a fresh accounting controversy this week as US pharmaceutical company Merck & Co. revealed it had booked €14 billion of sales that it never actually received, reports the Evening Standard.
The admission by Merck & Co. , one of the 30 blue-chip companies in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, follows accounting irregularities at Enron, WorldCom and Xerox and is set to heighten investor suspicions about the reliability of company accounts.
Merck & Co., which was audited by Andersen until March this year, made the admission in a filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Some shareholders are already sueing Merck & Co., claiming they were duped into thinking the company was doing better than it really was. It maintains that the practice was in accordance with standard accounting rules.
For the benefit of our readers we would like to clarify that Merck KGaA, the German pharmaceutical company, has no connection with Merck & Co. of Whitehouse Station, New Jersey, or its subsidiary Medco Health Solutions Inc.