The Sarbanes-Oxley Act was supposed to safeguard the US from another Enron-style accounting scandal. But the examiner's report into Lehman Brothers' failure has shed light on a new one. The parallels between the two bankruptcies are striking. First are the chief executives who claim ignorance of material measures. Second is the use of ugly, reality-cloaking off-balance sheet transactions. The resultant “repo 105/108” transactions, which in Lehman's final three quarters increased by almost one-third to $50bn, massaged the bank's period-end balance sheets and reduced its reported leverage.
人们本指望《萨班斯-奥克斯利法》(Sarbanes-Oxley act)能防止美国出现第二个安然(Enron)式的会计丑闻。但有关雷曼兄弟(Lehman Brothers)倒闭事件的调查报告还是暴露出了一起新的丑闻。两起破产案之间有明显的相似之处。首先是公司首席执行官声称对于具体操作毫不知情。其次是使用了一些丑陋的、旨在掩盖事实的表外交易。在雷曼最后三个季度，由此产生的“回购105/108”(Repo 105/108)等交易额增长了近三分之一，总额达500亿美元，从而篡改了该行的期间末资产负债表，并缩小了其报告的杠杆率。