Provo Company Kicked off Nasdaq, Faces Accounting Probe

Provo Company Kicked off Nasdaq, Faces Accounting Probe


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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- Nature's Sunshine Products Inc., a Provo company that makes vitamins and nutritional supplements, was de-listed by the Nasdaq National Stock Market on Wednesday.

There was no indication the company's shares would be eligible for trading or quotation on alternative exchanges or markets.

The de-listing came after Nature's Sunshine failed to file financial statements with the Securities and Exchange Commission, announced it was retracting four years of reports and said it faced a government investigation into its accounting methods.

The company's chief financial officer, Craig Huff, resigned last week. He was replaced by Stephen Bunker, the former vice president of finance and treasurer of the defunct Geneva Steel Co. of Utah County.

Bunker previously worked for the accounting firm Arthur Andersen in Salt Lake City.

Nature's Sunshine didn't file a financial report for the quarter ending Sept. 30, 2005 or an annual report for 2005. It reported that its accounting firm quit on Friday.

In a related development, Standard & Poor's said it was replacing Nature's Sunshine on the S&P SmallCap 600 index with TradeStation Group Inc., a company based in Plantation, Fla., that operates an Internet-based securities brokerage for institutional, professional and active individual traders.

The company said in one SEC filing that internal auditors found "certain internal control weaknesses and outlined potential violations of law." It did not elaborate.

Nature's Sunshine stock dropped $2.01, or 16.7 percent, to a 52-week low of $10.03 per share Tuesday on Nasdaq. The shares had traded as high as $23.89 in the last year.

(Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

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