Santa Ana software maker MSC.Software Corp. said the Securities & Exchange Commission has subpoenaed “certain documents” related to the company’s yearlong internal investigation of its past financial accounting.
“The company believes the investigation relates to the previously disclosed independent review directed by the company’s audit committee and completed in January 2005,” according to an MSC press release.
The subpoena marks the first time the SEC formally has been involved in the MSC investigation.
“It’s simply a request for documents,” said MSC spokesman Todd Evans. “It’s a long list.”
The SEC’s formal investigation is another episode in MSC’s saga, which began a year ago when the company said it was reviewing its financial statements after shareholders complained that an executive’s severance package wasn’t disclosed.
The review then was expanded to include what the company counts as revenue. The company hasn’t filed financial results with the SEC for a year, pending the outcome of the investigation.
“We’re making progress on that,” Evans said.
The maker of industrial and engineering software plans to restate earnings results for the past three and a half years.
The company’s shares were delisted from the New York Stock Exchange and trade on the Pink Sheets because of the investigation.
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.
In February, 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.
