Business & Finance

Xerox Corp. said it overstated revenues by $6.4 billion over five years, making it the latest US corporation to disclose accounting irregularities so far. The amount, divulged Friday, was more than double the $3 million estimated when the copiermaker agreed to restate its 1997-2001 financial results as part of a $10 million settlement of fraud charges by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

IDT Corp., a long-distance telephone and Internet services provider, and the chief of troubled WorldCom Inc., are expected to meet this week for discussions on the sale of MFS Communications, the latter's local-service operations for governmental and business customers. Wire service reports and the Financial Times put the likely size of an IDT offer at $4 billion. An IDT source told the Financial Times his company wanted to deal before WorldCom descended into bankruptcy, since the main value of the MFS unit was its customer base, not its technology. IDT is based in Newark, N.J.

Liberty Media, already a major investor in the Discovery, E!, and QVC cable TV channels and tycoon Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., is expected to bid for bankrupt NTL, the No. 1 cable provider in Britain, as soon as this week, reports said. Any investment in the latter was prevented by a six-month "standstill" agreement that expired Sunday. NTL, which is in the process of restructuring, owes creditors $10.6 billion. A sale to Liberty Media would make the Englewood, Colo.-based company the king of cable in Britain. It already owns 25 percent of Telewest Communications, the kingdom's second-largest carrier.

A bankruptcy court OK'd the $255 million sale of Polaroid to a unit of Chicago-based Bank One Corp., the nation's sixth-largest bank. Bank One's OEP Imaging also agreed to assume $200 million in Polaroid liabilities and to give unsecured creditors a 35 percent equity stake in the new firm. Cambridge, Mass.-based Polaroid declared bankruptcy last year, with $1 billion in debts.