Wall St. Points to Disclosure As Issue

AIG, the subject of an $85 billion federal intervention earlier this month, faced intense pressure to post more collateral with trading partners and lenders who raised questions about the value of investments the insurance giant held. The trading partners were also concerned about credit protection that AIG had sold to others in the form of complex instruments known as credit default swaps. Martin Sullivan, then chief executive, decried fair-value accounting in a February conference call with investors and called for regulators to make changes after AIG took an $11 billion write-down this year. Joe Norton, a spokesman for AIG, declined to comment yesterday.

As another example of recent accounting challenges, analysts cite Merrill Lynch's sale of $30.6 billion of collateralized debt obligations, or pools of mortgage-linked assets, to the investment company Lone Star Funds for only 22 cents on the dollar in July. Jessica Oppenheim, a spokeswoman for Merrill, which this month agreed to be purchased by Bank of America, declined to comment.

Advocates for leading financial institutions, including the Financial Services Roundtable and the American Bankers Association, have been raising the issue with government officials in Washington and New York for months. Arizona Sen. John McCain, the GOP presidential candidate, mentioned fair-value accounting as a problem in a recent stump speech.

Lobbyists have been seeking temporary relief from the accounting measure, which they say establishes bargain-basement prices for assets that would be valued far higher during more normal trading conditions. The events of last week raised fresh concerns among industry executives who fear that investments sold to the government as part of the $700 billion bailout plan will set a bargain-basement precedent for the rest of the market.

Banks also have been fighting their auditors, some of which have reasoned that downmarket conditions have persisted for so long that assets are no longer "temporarily impaired" but now require write-downs and capital infusions. Banking trade association officials are scheduled to meet with SEC regulators this week to discuss the issue, which could prompt some banks to attract new capital to meet regulatory requirements.

"The accounting rules and their implementation have made this crisis much, much worse than it needed to be," said Ed Yingling, president of the bankers' association. "Instead of measuring the flame, they're pouring fuel on the fire."

The odds of a wholesale regulatory reversal in the near term, however, are slim, according to two sources briefed on the process, because a shift away from fair-value accounting would only intensify trouble with pricing complex assets in an unruly market. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.

"It is extremely unlikely they are going to back off of market-value accounting in the midst of a crisis," said a financial services policy expert with long government experience. "When things stabilize, I guarantee you that you're going to see a revised procedure."

J. Edward Ketz, an accounting professor at Pennsylvania State University, says he "doesn't buy" the argument that fair-value accounting is a root cause of the problems. Executives never complained about mark-to-market accounting standards when they helped banks post huge gains on derivative investments during the economic boom, or when fair-value accounting for stock options produced tax benefits, Ketz said.

"If anything, I think that market-value accounting has helped to bring the problems to a head earlier and with less damage, than if market-value accounting hadn't been applied," said Charles W. Mulford, an accounting expert at the Georgia Institute of Technology.