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.
人們本指望《薩班斯-奧克斯利法》(Sarbanes-Oxley act)能防止美國出現第二個安然(Enron)式的會計醜聞。但有關雷曼兄弟(Lehman Brothers)倒閉事件的調查報告還是暴露出了一起新的醜聞。兩起破產案之間有明顯的相似之處。首先是公司執行長聲稱對於具體操作毫不知情。其次是使用了一些醜陋的、旨在掩蓋事實的表外交易。在雷曼最後三個季度，由此產生的「回購105/108”(Repo 105/108)等交易額成長了近三分之一，總額達500億美元，從而篡改了該行的期間末資產負債表，並縮小了其報告的槓桿率。