Ailing Adelphia dumps Deloitte

By JIM ARMITAGE
Updated:

 

WALL Street was reeling from yet another accounting debacle as troubled cable operator Adelphia Communications fired its accountants Deloitte & Touche and admitted it had overstated its subscriber numbers.

The company is the target of a US Securities and Exchange Commission investigation and two Federal grand jury probes into off-balance sheet loans to its founding Rigas family.

The company cut its subscriber count by 47,000 to 5.76m. It also dropped its revenue figure for 2001 by 2% to $3.51bn (£2.4bn) from the $3.58bn it had previously reported, as it admitted to what it described as 'inaccuracies in previously reported data'.

The admission came as natural gas pipeline group Williams, also being probed by Federal regulators, slashed its 2002 earnings forecasts.

Most watched Money videos