Shares of Santa Ana software maker MSC.Software Corp. made their expected debut on the low-profile Pink Sheets exchange on Friday.
In February, MSC said its shares were to be delisted from the New York Stock Exchange because of an ongoing review of its past financial accounting. MSC makes industrial design software.
The stock move is the latest in an ongoing saga for MSC.
Last summer, MSC said a probe by its audit committee into software sales in Asia has been expanded to look at how the company accounts for all global sales.
The maker of industrial and engineering software plans to restate earnings results for the past three and a half years. It said it wouldn’t meet a deadline to file its 2003 annual report.
Last year hedge fund ValueAct Partners LP offered to buy MSC for $275 million to take the company private. The software maker declined the offer.
ValueAct and MSC then struck a deal in which ValueAct agreed not to pursue acquiring the company while the accounting review is under way.
Only after MSC is current in its financial filings can ValueAct make another offer for the company, according to the agreement.
Last month, Frank Perna retired as MSC’s chairman and chief executive. William Weyand, former chief of Structural Dynamics Research Corp., another industrial design software maker, was named as Perna’s replacement.
Weyand left Structural Dynamics after it was sold to Electronic Data Systems Corp. for almost $1 billion in 2001.
The company said Perna, who joined the company in 1998, had been talking to the board about leaving MSC since 2003.
