The financial results that companies give investors are supposed to paint a picture of how things are. Banks and their regulators want to turn that notion on its head so they can spin a smooth tale of how they would like things to be.
Sadly, some accounting rule makers may be ready to appease banks and the politicians who back them. If that happens, financial results will change from a vital tool for investors to a vehicle catering to managers, regulators and employees.
This battle over financial reporting is playing out in the debate over proposed accounting rules for how banks value things such as loans and bonds.
The International Accounting Standards Board is hoping to have new rules in place by year-end. The Financial Accounting Standards Board in the US is moving at a slower pace, though the boards hope to eventually agree to similar rules.
Both groups have come under fire from banks and regulators in the past month, although the IASB has drawn the most heat. That’s happened even though the IASB has already bent too far to please the industry.
Listen to government
In late August, French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde wrote to the European Commission decrying some of the proposed rules while saying the independent IASB must be made “more responsive” to government wishes.
Banks and their regulators meanwhile have claimed that proposals from both boards rely too much on mark-to-market accounting. The American Bankers Association yesterday wrote to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke asking that they bring up the issue at the meeting later this month of the G-20 industrialised nations.
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The attacks go deeper, though, seeking to change the underpinnings of financial reporting and who it should serve.
The accounting-rule changes should gauge the worth of a company’s holdings based on its business model, according to a letter from the ABA last month. This would allow banks to overlook short-term changes in the value of a security because they decide to call themselves a long-term holder.
No 1 audience
The rules should also “improve the decision usefulness and relevance of financial reporting for stakeholders, including prudential regulators,” according to a document issued last month by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, a group whose members are central banks. In other words, investors should no longer think that they are the main audience for financial statements.
The practical result of such approaches would be to allow banks to report smoother results that supposedly reflect their long-term prospects. For banks, smoother profits would presumably lead to higher share prices. For regulators, less volatile results would supposedly make it easier to maintain financial stability.
The problem, as investors know, is that life, and markets, aren’t smooth. Conditions change, as do financial values.
Because of this, investors need financial statements that provide information about the current state of a company’s business and worth. The past two years, replete with unexpected failures of supposedly solid firms like Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc, have shown how vital that is.
Creditors count
Plus, investors aren’t just shareholders. They include creditors such as bondholders, who need to know what a company is worth today in case it goes under.
Banks argue that their intent should matter. If a bank plans to hold, rather than trade, a security, it shouldn’t have to worry about daily fluctuations in its value, they say.
Both the IASB and FASB have given ground to this business-model view, although the FASB’s changes aren’t as onerous for investors.
The IASB, on the other hand, wants to give banks more chances to show holdings at their historical cost. In doing so, it also plans, unlike the FASB, to allow banks to completely ignore changes in the market value of some securities.
This may result in banks reporting puffed-up equity, giving investors a false sense of comfort. Two banks, for example, may hold the same AAA-rated security, which has fallen, say, $5 from a face value of $100. One might report a value of $95, the other, $100. This would make it difficult for investors to make apples-to-apples comparisons among companies.
This reflects banks’ true desire to record the value of all holdings based on their own view of how the economy and business conditions will play out. That may suit their purposes and those of regulators who will countenance any fiction if it means markets are momentarily calm.
It won’t do much for investors. They’ll quickly discover that when bankers paint pictures of rainbows, there probably isn’t a pot of gold at the end of it.