MiniScribe, founded in 1980 and based in Longmont, Colorado, was a disk drive manufacturer. When MiniScribe hit a slump in the mid-1980s because it had lost its largest customer, IBM, the board of directors brought in Q.T. Wiles. Called the “Mr. Fix-It” of high technology industries, Wiles had turned around Adobe System, Granger Associates, and Silicon General, Inc.
When Wiles took over at MiniScribe, he engaged the venture-capital and investment banking firm of Hambrecht & Quist to raise the capital needed for the firm’s turnaround. Hambrecht & Quist raised $20 million in 1987 through the sale of debentures. Wiles was, at that time, the chairman of Hambrecht & Quist. Hambrecht & Quist purchased $7.5 million of the debentures and also purchased a 17 percent interest in MiniScribe.
With new capital and simultaneous cost cuts, MiniScribe’s sales went from $113.9 million in 1985 to a projected $603 million in 1988. In 1987, MiniScribe’s board asked Wiles to stay on for another three years. That year, MiniScribe’s stock climbed to $12 per share, and seven other officers sold 200,000 shares.
During 1988, the computer industry underwent another slump, and by May, Wiles and other officers were selling stock. Wiles sold 150,000 shares for between $11 and $12 per share, and seven other officers sold 200,000 shares.
By the time the shares were sold, MiniScribe held the unenviable position of having high inventory and high receivables. Industry sales were down, and MiniScribe customers were not paying their bills. In early 1989, MiniScribe announced a $ 14.6 million loss for the final quarter of 1988. MiniScribe’s ratio of inventory to sales was 33 percent (the industry average was 24 percent) , and its receivables were ninety-four days behind (the industry average was seventy days). The amount of receivables went from $109 million to $173 million in the last quarter of 1988.
MiniScribe’s release of the new financial information resulted in an in-house audit, shareholder lawsuits, and an investigation of stock trading by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Scrutiny by regulators, outside directors, and the SEC revealed that Wiles, through his unrealistic sales goal, had created a high-pressure environment for manager. In interviews, managers described “dash meetings” in which Wiles spouted his management philosophies. In one such meeting, Wiles had two controllers stand as he fired them, saying, “That’s just to show everyone I’m in control of the company.” Wiles’ attorney described him as “fairly autocratic and very demanding of the people who work for him.
The in-house audit uncovered that, by late 1986, financial results had become the sole criterion for performance evaluations and bonuses at MiniScribe. To be sure that they hit their quotas, MiniScribe sales personal had used creative accounting maneuvers. For example, in one case a customer was shipped twice as many disk drives as had been ordered --- at a value of $9 million. Although the extra drives were returned, the sale for all the drives had already been booked.
The investigation also revealed that’s in some order, sales were booked at the time of shipment even though title would not pass to the customer until completion of shipment. An examination of MiniScribe’s financial records showed that the company had manipulated its reserves to offset its losses. MiniScribe posted only 1 percent as reserves, whereas the industry range was 4 to 10 percent. In some of the transactions the audit uncovered shipment sent to MiniScribe warehouses were booked as sales when, in fact, customer were not even invoiced until the drives were shipped from warehouse.
Through these creative manipulation and others, MiniScribe officer kept up a rosy fiscal appearance for the firm’s auditors, Coopers & Lybrand. For example, for the 1987 audited financials, company officials packaged and shipped construction bricks (pretend inventory value at $3.66 million) so that these products would count as retail sales. When bricks were returned, the sales were reversed but inventory increased. Obsolete past and scraps were rewrapped as products and shipped to warehouses to be counted in inventory.
It was discovered during the 1986 audit by Coopers & Lybrand that company officials broke into trunks containing the auditors’ work papers and increased year-end inventory figures.
With the disclosure of the internal audit and the discovery of these creative accounting practices and inventory deception, MiniScribe’s stock continued to drop, selling for $1.31 per share by September 1989. By 1990, MiniScribe had filed for bankruptcy and was purchased by Maxtor Corporation.
Lawsuits against Hambrecht & Quist, Wiles, and Coopers & Lybrand were brought by Kempner Capital management, the U.S. National Bank of Galveston, and eleven other investors in the debentures sold by Hambrecht & Quist. In February 1992, a jury awarded the investors $28.7 million in compensatory damages and $530 million in punitive damages. Coopers & Lybrand was held responsible for $200 million, Wiles for $250 million, Hambrecht & Quist for $45 million, and Mr. Hambrecht for $35 million.