The new restatement issue

There is an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal today (subscription required) about the number of restatements occuring due to firms' misunderstanding of the requirements necessary to qualify a transaction for hnedging treatment:

Hedge accounting is complex, but the goal is easy to understand: When a company uses derivatives to hedge exposure to risks like changes in interest rates and fluctuations in foreign currencies, it wants those derivatives to qualify for hedge-accounting treatment under accounting rules because any changes in the derivatives' value can be excluded from current earnings. The value changes are "smoothed" into earnings over time. Without that special accounting status, the derivatives' ups and downs would make earnings unpredictable, which companies and shareholders dislike.

To qualify for hedge accounting, however, companies have to meet a strict set of criteria. And dozens have discovered lately that either they haven't fully complied or have cut corners they shouldn't have. Some have found their hedges don't do the job they're supposed to in offsetting the changes caused by the risk they're hedging. Others don't have sufficient documentation for their hedges.A

A number of companies are filing non-reliance 8-Ks because they have used the short cut method without ever having checked for hedge effectiveness in the firstplace. Here is the 8-K from Great Southern Bancorp. Remember one of the keys to applying the shortcut method is the that the features of the hedge match precisely the features of the instrument being hedged (i.e. there is no value at initiation):

On January 18, 2006, management and the Audit Committee of the Board of Directors of the Company determined that the Company's financial statements as of and for the quarters ended March 31, 2005, June 30, 2005 and September 30, 2005, and as of and for the years ended December 31, 2004, 2003, 2002 and 2001, should no longer be relied upon as a result of the accounting treatment applied by the Company in connection with certain interest rate swaps associated with brokered CDs.

Since mid-2000, the Company has entered into interest rate swap agreements to hedge the interest rate risk inherent in certain of its brokered certificates of deposit (CDs). From the inception of the hedging program, the Company has applied a method of fair value hedge accounting under Statement of Financial Accounting Standards ("SFAS") 133 to account for the CD swap transactions that allowed the Company to assume the effectiveness of such transactions (the so-called "short-cut" method). The Company has recently concluded, in conjunction with BKD, LLP, its independent registered public accounting firm at all relevant times, that the CD swap transactions did not qualify for this method in prior periods because the method to pay the related CD broker placement fee was determined, in retrospect, to have caused the swap to not have a fair value of zero at inception (which is required under SFAS 133 to qualify for the "short-cut" method). Although the impact of applying the alternative "long-haul" method of documentation using SFAS 133 and the results under the "short-cut" method are believed to result in no significant difference in the hedge effectiveness of the majority of these swaps, and management believes these interest rate swaps have been effective as economic hedges, hedge accounting under SFAS 133 is not allowed for the affected periods because the proper hedge documentation was not in place at the inception of the hedge.

The Company is charged a fee in connection with its acquisition of brokered CDs. This fee is not paid separately by the Company to the CD broker, but rather is built in as part of the overall rate on the interest rate swap. In connection with the restatement, the Company has determined that this broker fee should be accounted for separately as a prepaid fee at the origination of the brokered CD and amortized into interest expense over the maturity period of the brokered CD. If the Company calls the brokered CD (at par) prior to maturity, the remaining unamortized broker fee is expensed at that time. The remaining unamortized prepaid broker fees related to these brokered CDs at December 31, 2005, were $6.5 million.