Back in April, Outback Chief Financial Officer Robert Merritt surprised his fellow executives, company employees, Wall Street, and other finance executives when he announced at the end of a routine earnings conference call with analysts that he would retire on May 27, citing what he called “recent lunacy over lease accounting.”
Calling the situation a “fiasco,” Merritt noted that more than 150 companies have recently restated their results for accounting issue, adding, “Reaction from the media that these companies are run by crooks who were cooking the books is disturbing.” For the record, others put the number of companies that have restated results stemming from the lease accounting issue at 200.
