The Securities and Exchange Commission may impose new regulations that would prevent financial firms from masking risks by temporarily lowering debt figures for quarterly reports, according to The Wall Street Journal. The announcement, which came from SEC Chairwoman Mary Schapiro, follows a recent report that found banks lowered debt levels by an average of 42 percent at the end of the last five quarters from quarterly peaks.
The new rules would extend existing regulation designed to prevent banks from posting deceptive information, potentially offering investors information about quarterly peak and average debt values, rather than just snapshots for the end of the quarter. The extension might apply to all companies, not just financial firms. The increased scrutiny follows review of the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, which found that the firm hid debt levels through “Repo 105” transactions that treated certain loans as sales.
