Company news

Oops. West Lafayette-based Bioanalytical Systems Inc. announced Aug. 21 that it will have to restate financial reports going all the way back to June 2011 because of an accounting error. Bioanalytical, which sells drug development equipment and services to pharmaceutical firms, has been unable to file its latest quarterly filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Because of that failure to file, the NASDAQ stock market has threatened to delist Bioanalytical. The $422,000 error helped make Bioanalytical’s losses applicable to common shareholders during the past 2½ years about 4 percent less than they should have been, according to an unaudited restatement of results issued by the company. The company previously reported losses for common shareholders of $10.1 million during that 2½-year period. The error occurred in May 2011 when Bioanalytical staged a public offering of new shares. Those sales included a purchase warrant, which Bioanalytical should have recorded as a liability, but instead recorded as equity. The warrants could, in some cases, require Bioanalytical to pay cash to investors, the company stated in a press release.

After shelling out $29.4 million last year to settle 15 years' worth of bribery charges, Indianapolis-based drugmaker Eli Lilly and Co. is in the same pickle again. A Chinese newspaper reported last week that Lilly employees in China gave at least $4.9 million in bribes and kickbacks to Chinese doctors to entice them to prescribe Lilly’s medicines, particularly its insulins for diabetes. A Lilly spokeswoman would neither confirm nor deny the allegations to Bloomberg News, but said Lilly is investigating. Bribes and special payments are common practice for selling products in China, according to the 21st Century Business Herald in China, but it is a violation of U.S. law for a U.S.-based corporation to bribe foreign officials. The allegations make Lilly the third major multinational drugmaker accused of bribing doctors in return for prescribing drugs. GlaxoSmithKline Plc, based in London, and Paris-based Sanofi-Aventis SA face similar investigations. In 2012, Lilly agreed to pay the SEC to settle charges that it paid off government officials to obtain government contracts in Brazil, China, Russia and Poland from 1994 to 2009.

Planned Parenthood of Indiana is suing to block a new state law that tightens abortion pill regulations, arguing that the law wrongly targets the organization's clinic in Lafayette, according to the Associated Press. The federal lawsuit filed Aug. 22 claims the law violates equal protection rights because it requires the Planned Parenthood clinic in Lafayette to meet the same standards as surgical abortion clinics but doesn't apply those rules to the offices of doctors who distribute the abortion pill. The Lafayette clinic does not perform surgical abortions. Planned Parenthood officials maintain the only purpose of requiring it to have separate procedure and recovery rooms is to restrict women's access to the abortion pill. The law was approved in April by the Republican-dominated Legislature. Supporters say it's aimed at ensuring the abortion pill is given under proper medical care.