Accounting

Mall owner Simon Property Group Inc. and Farallon Capital Management, the largest shareholder of beleaguered Mills Corp., offered Monday to buy Mills for $1.56 billion, topping a $1.35-billion offer from Brookfield Asset Management Inc. The new bid for Chevy Chase, Md.-based Mills is valued at $24 a share. Last month, Canada-based Brookfield agreed to buy Mills for $21 a share. Indianapolis-based Simon, the largest U.S.

Three former Merrill Lynch & Co. bankers will be retried for their roles in an Enron Corp. fraud involving a sham sale of Nigerian power barges. "We would prefer to try the case sooner rather than later," Arnold Spencer, the government's lead prosecutor, told U.S. District Judge Ewing Werlein Jr. at a hearing Friday in federal court in Houston. A U.S. appeals court in New Orleans last year threw out the convictions of former Merrill bankers Daniel Bayly, Robert S. Furst and James A.

AES Corp., a U.S. power producer, said it was investigating its accounting for stock option grants and planned to restate earnings for the first nine months of 2006 and for the years 2005 and 2004. AES will probably delay filing its annual report for a second straight year after identifying certain errors in its financial statements, the Arlington, Va-based company said Monday in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

A behind-the-scenes power struggle over control of the Minuteman Project spilled into an Orange County courtroom Monday with ousted co-founder Jim Gilchrist asking a judge to give him back control of the citizen border patrol group. Superior Court Judge Randell L. Wilkinson said he would issue a ruling within a few days.

Jim Balsillie, co-chief executive of BlackBerry maker Research in Motion Ltd., stepped down as chairman Monday as the company announced a $250-million earnings restatement relating to mistakes in how it granted stock options. RIM said it found no intentional misconduct by executives, directors or other employees responsible for administering option grants.

Four years after federal regulators first accused two former Gateway Inc. executives of manipulating earnings, a jury found the men liable for violating fraud and recordkeeping laws and making false statements, the Securities and Exchange Commission said Thursday. The jury reached a decision Wednesday in the civil trial against former Chief Financial Officer John J. Todd and former Controller Robert D. Manza.

Congress should revamp securities regulation, shield accounting firms from litigation and take other steps to bolster American financial competitiveness, according to a new report from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Echoing other recent studies by business and political groups, the report to be released today by a chamber-appointed commission says that U.S.

North American securities regulators sued former top executives of Nortel Networks Corp. for allegedly manipulating earnings to meet financial targets. The executives, including former Chief Executive Frank Dunn, engaged in accounting fraud from 2000 to 2004, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Ontario Securities Commission alleged in complaints filed Monday. The complaints also target former finance chief Douglas C. Beatty and former Controller Michael J. Gollogly.

A series of accounting blunders in a state program that provides mental health services to children has resulted in a $300-million blow to the California budget, the administration of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger acknowledged Monday. Officials at the Department of Mental Health told a state Senate panel that they thought they had money to cover their bills when in fact it had been appropriated for other uses under a new accounting practice.

The former chief executive of business software firm Peregrine Systems Inc. pleaded guilty Tuesday to three criminal charges for his role in the accounting fraud scheme that bankrupted the company. Stephen Parker Gardner appeared in federal court to change his earlier not-guilty plea on one count each of conspiracy, securities fraud and obstruction of justice.