Restatements of annual and quarterly financial reports climbed to 330 in 2002 from 270 a year earlier, Chicago-based Huron Consulting Group said.

The figure increased as a new corporate responsibility law forced executives to sign off on the accuracy of results, and the disappearance of Arthur Andersen LLP prompted 1,300 U.S. companies to hire new auditors. Andersen, Enron Corp.'s accountant for 16 years, stopped auditing public companies Aug. 31.

"You can't talk about restatements in 2002 without citing those two events," Joseph Floyd, Huron's managing director and author of the study, said in an interview.

The study showed that more than half of the restatements, or 185, came after passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. The restatements also involved bigger companies, with 190 by companies with more than $100 million in annual sales and 74 by companies with revenue of more than $1 billion.

Companies restating earnings last year included Kmart Corp., WorldCom Inc., Tyco International Ltd., and Xerox Corp.

Although Arthur Andersen was the auditor of record for 40 of the restatements, 26 of them occurred after a new accounting firm had been hired, the study found.

"Having new auditors come in means a fresh look at all a company's judgments, estimates, and previous accounting policies," Floyd said. "It's fertile ground for restatements."

The accounting reason behind 85 percent of the restatements last year was revenue recognition, where a company improperly recognizes revenue from transactions, the study showed.

The study was previously reported by The Wall Street Journal.

-- Jack Duffy, Bloomberg News