Excerpt: "Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products NV, after insisting for months
that is accounting practices were sound, said yesterday it expects to restate its
financial statements for 1998, 1999 and the first half of 2000 to make up for past
accounting "errors and irregularities.
L&H didn't specify the nature of the accounting issues that will cause it to
restate its financials for the past 2 ½ years. But it said they came to light in an
inquiry conducted by an internal audit committee set up in September when the
SEC launched a formal probe of L&H. The SEC is investigating among other
things, a sudden surge in L&H's sales to South Korea and the company's ties to
30 start-up firms that accounted for a quarter of its revenue last year, and 10% in
1998.
