"The company will probably have to restate its results for North America, so this probably does not mean a major change in company results in general," said Ronald Wildmann, an analyst from Bank Leu in Zurich who has followed Adecco for seven years.
He noted that the North American unit accounted for less than 4 percent of group income.
"The long-term problem is that investor confidence has been dented," Wildmann said.
Adecco, formed in 1996 when Adia of Switzerland merged with Ecco of France, was audited until 2001 by Arthur Andersen, which collapsed in the wake of the Enron scandal.
In 2002, it was audited by Ernst, which gave Adecco a clean report and said that the company had complied with US accounting rules.
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