亚洲公司难觅美国审计行

New Accounting Rules Stymie Asia Firms' Hunt for Auditors

Tighter regulations on accounting practices post-Enron are making it increasingly difficult for Asian companies listed in the U.S. to find American-registered accountants to review their books.

After the Enron Corp. scandal compelled auditors to draw a clearer line between accounting and advisory work, the Big Four accounting firms are increasingly refusing to take jobs that might smack of a conflict of interest. In many Asian countries, the only auditors approved by U.S. securities regulators are the Big Four: Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu , KPMG LLP, Ernst & Young LLP and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

With all four busy advising governments on privatization work, that doesn't leave enough auditors to go around, particularly for state-owned companies that are being privatized. That is making it tough for some Asian companies that are listed in the U.S. and need to hire auditors approved by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

One company now caught in that trap is New York Stock Exchange-listed PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia, , majority-owned by the government and that country's largest telecom company. Telkom, as the company is known, could have its U.S. shares delisted because it recently hired a nonapproved auditor to handle its 2002 accounts. Telkom said it is having a hard time finding a suitable auditor and may miss a July 15 SEC deadline to resubmit the accounts. If it misses that deadline, its shares may be delisted.

Choices Are Limited

"With there being only four major auditing firms, and with the enforcement of much stricter independence rules, Telkom's choice of auditor is very limited," said an accountant with one of the Big Four in Jakarta that turned down auditing work at the company.

At least three of the Big Four accounting firms have recently been advising the Indonesian government in some capacity, auditors said. The government hired the firms to advise it on plans to sell shares in Telkom to the public. The government used them during last year's sale of a controlling stake in Indonesia Satellite Corp. to a Singapore government-linked company. Thus, working directly for Telkom might constitute a conflict.

Other international accounting firms have affiliates in Jakarta, but only the four major firms are registered with the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants -- a benchmark for gaining SEC approval, auditors said.

Deloitte Departs

Deloitte audited Telkom's accounts until 2001, but left the company last year after a dispute with the government regarding the audit of another state-owned enterprise. The remaining three U.S. firms turned down Telkom's offer to audit due to conflicts of interest, which ranged from past advisory work to having conducted executive searches for the company, the Jakarta accountant said.

Analysts said they don't believe Telkom's financial report for 2002 was misleading. The company posted net profit of 8.345 trillion rupiah ($1.01 billion), almost double the previous year due to a boost in subscribers at its mobile-phone unit.

That hasn't assuaged Telkom's fears voiced during the past week that losing its U.S. listing might deter foreign investors from lending at a time when the company needs cash to fund expansion.

Bacelius Ruru, head of Telkom's board of commissioners, said this week the company hopes to hire KPMG. But it remains unclear whether conflict-of-interest issues can be resolved, said Herwidayatmo, the head of Indonesia's capital-market regulator, Bapepam. KPMG declined to comment on the matter.

Telkom's problems illustrate how a dearth of foreign auditors could complicate efforts by other Asian companies to raise capital in the U.S.

Small Number of Firms

In the U.S. and Europe, smaller firms can take on auditing work where the Big Four may have conflicts of interest, said James Kallman, the managing partner of Moores Rowland International's Indonesian affiliate. In Asian countries, the local partners of these second-tier firms often lack SEC approval to audit U.S.-listed companies. That happened to Mr. Kallman's firm, PT Eddy Pianto, which audited Telkom's 2002 results while it was a partner of Grant Thornton LLP. The firm, now known as PT Jimmy Budhi, became affiliated to Moores Rowland earlier this year.

"The small number of SEC-approved firms means the Big Four are going to increasingly end up conflicted for auditing purposes," Mr. Kallman said.

Foreign auditors working in Southeast Asian countries, such as Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines, are most likely to face conflicts of interest because of the large amount of advisory work they do for the governments, said Andy Xie, regional economist for Morgan Stanley.

Lack of Transparency

Auditors in Thailand said they have advised on privatizations, which might rule them out from auditing state-owned companies, such as energy company PTT PCL or Thai Airways International when they come up for sale to investors.

Unlike Telkom, the main casualties of growing caution among auditors have been closely held Asian companies that analysts say lack financial transparency.

The Big Four are more frequently dropping Asian clients due to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which is legislation passed last year in the U.S. that aimed to tighten accounting-industry regulations.

China Rare Earth Holdings Ltd., a Hong Kong-listed company in the Chinese province of Jiangsu, is the latest example. Ernst & Young and KPMG walked off the job earlier this year amid media speculation of accounting irregularities. China Rare Earth denied the allegations but hasn't been able to find an international auditor to handle its accounts. "Big Chinese companies are trying to get credibility from the Big Four," Morgan Stanley's Mr. Xie said. "But we are seeing more willingness by foreign auditors to resign from their jobs."
亚洲公司难觅美国审计行

对公司会计实务的监管在安然(Enron Corp.)事件后得到加强，这使得在美国上市的亚洲公司越来越难以找到美国注册的会计师事务所来审计他们的财务报告。

在安然丑闻迫使会计师事务所划清会计和咨询的界限之后，四大会计师事务所越来越倾向于拒绝接受那些可能带有利益冲突的业务。在许多亚洲国家中，获得美国证券交易委员会(SEC)许可的审计公司只有四大会计师事务所：德勤会计师行 (Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu)、毕马威会计事务所(KPMG LLP)、安永会计师事务所(Ernst & Young LLP)和普华永道(PricewaterhouseCoopers)。

因为这四家会计师事务所正忙于向各国政府提供私有化咨询服务，因此没有足够的审计师开展其他业务。这使一些在美国上市的亚洲公司很难聘请到获SEC许可的会计师事务所。

目前有一家公司正陷入了这种困境，这就是在纽约证交所上市的印尼最大的电信公司PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia（简称Telkom）。因为由政府控股的Telkom近期聘请了一家没有获得许可的审计公司来审计其2002年账目，其股票可能因此会被SEC摘牌。Telkom表示正在艰难地寻找合适的审计公司，但可能无法在7月15日的最后期限前向SEC重新提交财务报表。如果逾期无法递交财务报表，该公司股票可能会从纽约证交所摘牌。

四大会计师事务所中的一家已经拒绝为该公司审计，该事务所驻雅加达的一位外国会计师说，由于只有四家大型会计师事务所符合资格，再加上更严格的独立性原则的实行，Telkom选择会计师事务所的范围非常有限。

审计师们说，四大会计师事务所中至少有三家近期一直在为印尼政府提供咨询服务。政府聘请这些大型会计师事务所为向公众发售Telkom股票的计划提供建议；在去年将纽约证交所上市的Indonesian Satellite Corp.控股权出售给一家与新加坡政府有关的公司的交易中，政府也聘请了这些事务所提供服务。因此，它们直接为Telkom提供审计服务可能会构成利益冲突。

审计师说，其他国际会计公司虽然也在雅加达有附属企业，但是只有四大会计师事务所在美国注册会计师协会(American Institute of Certified Public Accountants)注册，而这是获得SEC许可的基本条件。

德勤在2001年以前曾为Telkom提供审计服务，但是在去年因与印尼政府就另一家国有企业的审计产生矛盾，之后放弃了对Telkom的审计业务。其他三家会计师事务所也或多或少因利益冲突而拒绝了Telkom。一位雅加达的会计师说，所谓利益冲突涉及曾经为该公司提供过咨询服务，或者曾为该公司物色高级管理人士等等。

分析师说，他们不认为Telkom的2002年财务报告有误导性。该公司2002年净利润8.345万亿印尼盾（合10.2亿美元），几乎是上一年的两倍，原因是蜂窝电话子公司的订户数量增长。

但是这并不能减轻Telkom的担忧，该公司上周表示，失去珍视的美国上市资格可能会在需要资金进行扩张时，阻碍外国投资者向公司的贷款。

Telkom委员会负责人Bacelius Ruru本周说，该公司希望聘请毕马威会计事务所。但是印尼资本市场监管机构Bapepam负责人Herwidayatmo说，现在还不能肯定那样做是否能解决利益冲突问题。毕马威拒绝就此事置评。

Telkom的问题说明，外国审计公司的缺乏可能会使其他亚洲公司在美国融资的努力复杂化。

Moores Rowland International的印尼附属企业合伙人James Kallman说，在美国和欧洲，小型会计师事务所可以在四大会计师事务所存在利益冲突时为企业提供审计服务。但是，在亚洲国家，这些二线会计师事务所的当地合伙人通常没有SEC的许可，没有资格为在美国上市的公司进行审计。这种情况就发生在Kallman的会计师事务所PT Eddy Pianto身上。正是这家会计师事务所审计了Telkom的2002年财务报告。该公司目前名为PT Jimmy Budhi，并在今年早些时候成为Moores Rowland的附属企业。

Kallman说，获SEC许可的会计师事务所数量之低说明，四大会计师事务所最终将逐步在审计工作中遭遇利益冲突问题。

标普指大中华地区企业财务披露质素有待改善

Greater China cos should improve quality of financial disclosure - S&P UPDATE

Standard & Poor's Ratings Services said the quality of financial disclosure by corporations in Greater China needs to improve, noting that a significant number of accounting statements by Chinese firms in the region still require analytical adjustments to better portray credit risks.

S&P said it is conducting a review of the accounting system in the Greater China region after some high-profile accounting scandals, such as SK Corp.

A common problem is failure to fully reflect the leverage of companies by moving debts off their balance sheets to joint ventures and associated companies, it said.

Companies in Hong Kong are significant users of jointly controlled entities. In many cases disclosure about the nature and debt levels of such ventures is relatively poor, it added.

For instance, it said Cheung Kong Infrastructure has a 50-50 share-holding in three highly leveraged Australian utility companies to gather with its facilities of its associate Hong Kong Electric Holdings.

If these companies were fully consolidated, S&P estimates that Cheung Kong Infrastructure's debt to capital ratio would increase to 49 pct from 30 pct in 2002, it said.

""Recent technical rule changes by regulators and accounting associations have improved the transparencies of financial statements. However, they do not deal with all the creative accounting issues,"" said S&P credit analyst John Bailey.

""The application of accounting principles is usually decided by management and experience has shown that management at publicly listed companies often attempt to tailor their financial results to reflect more closely the hopes and expectations of the stock market,"" he said.

Bailey said another common accounting technique to enhance financial results is profit-smoothing. Boosting profit with one-time gains, such as selling undervalued investment, is common among companies in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

There is also evidence that some companies try to smooth out the peaks and valleys in earnings by using reserves to shift income to a later period, he said.

He said while companies have not overstated or understated profit in the aggregate over the long term, this treatment camouflages the true volatility in the company operational performance.

Bailey said there may be failure by China companies to write down impaired assets, and full disclosure of off-balance sheet liabilities is lacking.

He said the improvement in accounting practice in the region is not purely 'a regulatory issue'.

""Investors should look closely at the financial statement of a company including its balance sheet and cash flow statement. Companies should also voluntarily disclose more financial information while regulators should also help improve the existing accounting practices,"" he said.

""Although mainland China accounting system has achieved some success in moving toward accounting standardization, there is still a long way to go,"" Bailey added.

The report said that the poor financial transparency is magnified in China, where the quality of financial statements is relatively poor.
标普指大中华地区企业财务披露质素有待改善

标准普尔所发表的报告指, 大中华地区的企业披露质素有改善的需要, 并指该地区众多企业的财务报表仍须作出调整及分析方可展现真正的信贷风险。
报告指, 该地区企业其中一个降低公司负债比率的普遍做法, 是把有关债务转往属下合资企业或联营公司。香港企业成立联营公司的做法十分普遍, 惟该等联营公司或合资公司的财务披露水准却相对落后。
标普信用分析员白培睿表示, 最近区内监管机构及会计公会对会计规则的技术性修订的确有助提升企业财务报告的透明度, 惟该等会计规则的改变未全面触及创造性会计的问题。
报告亦指, 企业财务披露透明度的问题在中国内地亦尤为严重, 当地财务报告质素相对较低, 虽然中国在与国际准则趋同方面有一定进展, 惟仍与国际准则相差一段颇大的距离

Freddie Mac可能曾少报收益45亿美元Freddie Mac Discloses Possible Earnings Errors


Freddie Mac, citing lax accounting controls, said it understated earnings by as much as $4.5 billion after taxes and for the first time conceded that some of its past accounting and disclosure practices could have run afoul of federal securities rules.

The restatement by the government-sponsored mortgage company is larger than expected. But in a detailed progress report, Freddie Mac said a "lack of sufficient accounting expertise" and "internal control and management weaknesses" led the company to understate earnings by between $1.5 billion and $4.5 billion, after taxes, which translates into as much as $6.9 billion before taxes. The company said it couldn't provide a more specific number until its reaudit is completed during the third quarter.

The eight-page report, which Freddie Mac discussed in an hourlong conference call, was intended to quell criticism from investors who believed Freddie Mac needed to be more forthcoming about the progress of its investigation into its accounting irregularities. The report was contrite in its discussions of the causes -- and potential implications -- of the company's latest problems. Among other things, Freddie Mac acknowledged that a review launched by its board had reached the preliminary conclusion that the company's actions didn't "meet standards" that are required of companies that register with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The review also noted that certain transactions and accounting policies were "implemented with a view to their effect on earnings," presumably to reduce volatility in profits. Translation: to smooth earnings.

Freddie Mac's chief financial officer, Martin Baumann, said the board's inquiry had found cases in which employees appeared knowingly to violate accounting rules in an effort to manage earnings, though they believed at the time their decisions were "immaterial." The company Tuesday fired one of its former controllers who was in charge of day-to-day accounting during some portion of the time covered by the restatement, and other employees involved in past accounting have moved to other departments or left the company.

An SEC spokesman declined to comment.

Unlike corporate scandals involving companies like WorldCom or Enron, the problems Freddie Mac has disclosed don't suggest the company was trying to inflate earnings or cover up massive financial problems. In particular, the company's restatement is expected to result in higher earnings for past periods, though it could reduce future earnings.

Yet the disclosures, while praised by corporate-governance specialists for providing a better sense of Freddie Mac's problems, strongly suggest the company was seeking to smooth the volatility of its earnings, perhaps to impress investors who prefer steady, predictable results. The disclosures also may raise the possibility that Freddie Mac could face sanctions from federal regulators. The SEC, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight and the U.S. attorney in Alexandria, Va., have launched inquiries into the company following disclosures earlier this year that it would have to restate earnings for at least the past two years. The company ousted three of its top executives this month for failing to resolve the accounting problems in a timely manner.

Technically, Freddie Mac remains exempt from some SEC oversight because it hasn't registered with the agency, although it is in the process of doing so under pressure from critics. But Mr. Baumann says he believes the company is subject to SEC punishments if it is found that fraud was committed -- something he stressed is far from certain.

People familiar with the case added that the company could be charged with violating securities laws, because Freddie Mac reported earnings that included misleading information. The SEC has the right to charge any company for making misleading statements, even if the company didn't mean to deceive investors. The SEC often files civil charges against companies and individuals that haven't registered with the SEC but are accused of violating securities laws and defrauding investors.

Those concerns formed the backdrop as lawmakers debated oversight of the company and its larger cousin, Fannie Mae, at a hearing on Capitol Hill. Rep. Richard Baker, the Louisiana Republican who called the hearing, has proposed legislation to shift regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to the Office of Thrift Supervision in the Treasury Department.

The hearing, featuring specialists from Washington and Wall Street, generally gave a boost to Mr. Baker's proposal. But doubts were emerging about some details. A few Republicans on Mr. Baker's committee expressed concern that changes could roil the housing market, one of the economy's few bright spots. However, Republicans and Democrats alike praised the idea of strengthening regulation of the companies, for instance by increasing and stabilizing the funding of its regulator. Rep. Michael Oxley, an Ohio Republican who heads the Financial Services Committee, made a special appearance to note that the current regulator, Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight , "has appeared to be habitually slow to act and unable to predict" problems at Freddie Mac .

"OFHEO continues to fulfill its mission," a spokeswoman for the agency said. "We look forward to the opportunity to testify before Congress on the facts of this matter."

Mr. Baker, who said he intended to hold two more hearings this year, said he would write a letter to the company's regulator demanding the agency investigate whether Freddie Mac had violated its congressional charter by improperly concealing credit risk in one of the transactions it disclosed in its announcement.

A Freddie Mac spokesman said the company denies any violation of its charter.

Mr. Baker also said he would ask the congressional watchdog, the General Accounting Office, to look into the accounting of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Mr. Baker cited concerns that Fannie Mae might not be as healthy as its books would make it appear. The companies are under pressure from falling interest rates, which encourage homeowners to refinance. That squeezes the companies' margins.

In a statement, Fannie Mae said it "fully complies with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles and with all SEC accounting, financial disclosure and presentation requirements, including the annual presentation of our fair value balance sheet."

Perhaps anticipating those kinds of complaints, Freddie Mac went to great lengths to reassure investors it has its accounting problems under control and that the latest issues don't jeopardize Freddie Mac's ability to keep buying mortgages.

"Our fundamentals remain exceptionally strong and the franchise remains safe and sound," Freddie Mac's new chairman, Shaun O'Malley, said in a conference call with investors. Investors seemed heartened. In 4 p.m. New York Stock Exchange composite trading Wednesday, Freddie Mac shares rose 80 cents to $50.83 each.

So far, much of the scrutiny on Freddie Mac's accounting has focused on the way the company accounted for its derivatives, or financial contracts whose values are tied to an underlying security, commodity, interest rate or currency. But the company outlined other issues as well.

Among other things, Freddie Mac said it had improperly sold securities that had been designated as "held to maturity" instruments. That designation is reserved for holdings that a company intends to retain for the duration of their stated lives. The benefit is that the holdings' periodic value fluctuations generally don't need to be tallied each quarter and reflected in shareholder-equity statements.

By selling some securities prematurely, Freddie Mac will be disqualified until 2004 from classifying as much as $260 billion of mortgage securities as held-to-maturity instruments. In the interim, Freddie Mac will have to reclassify them retroactively as "available for sale," with value fluctuations hitting its shareholder-equity statements.

Freddie Mac said it has increased the size of its accounting staff. It also said it will begin releasing financial statements that are computed on a fair-market-value basis each quarter rather than once a year as before and will eliminate the use of pro forma "operating" results from its periodic financial disclosures.
Freddie Mac可能曾少报收益45亿美元

联邦住房贷款抵押公司(Freddie Mac)称，由于对会计事务管理松懈，该公司曾少报了最多45亿美元的税后收益，这也是该公司首次承认其过去的一些会计和披露操作可能与联邦证券管理规定背道而驰。

这家政府资助的抵押贷款公司重新公布的业绩高于市场此前的预期。但是，该公司在随后发布的较为详尽的报告中称，由于“缺乏丰富的会计专业知识”及“内部控制和管理方面不够完善”，致使其少报了15亿-45亿美元的税后收益，合税前收益最多69亿美元。该公司称，需要等到第三财政季度完成重新审计之后，才能提供更为具体的数字。

该公司承认，公司董事会进行的一项调查显示初步认定，该公司的作法没有达到作为一家在美国证券交易委员会(Securities and Exchange Commission, 简称SEC)注册的公司应当履行的标准。

上述调查还指出，该公司进行的某些交易和执行的会计政策考虑到其对收益可能造成的影响，据认为是旨在减少公司利润出现较大波动，也就是保持收益方面的平稳。

SEC的发言人拒绝发表评论。

美国公司寻求减少期权费用

Dell Joins Wave of Companies Seeking to Soften Options Hit

Companies don't yet have to record their employee stock options as expenses, but a number of large companies quietly are taking steps to lessen the impact on their bottom lines.

For fast-growing companies that issue lots of options, such as Dell Computer Corp., Genentech Inc. and Oracle Corp., a requirement forcing them to treat options as expenses would have turned their profits into losses for recent years.

Now, before such requirements go into effect as soon as early next year, these three companies and many others are changing the way they calculate the value of options, resulting in lower expenses. In doing so, they are taking advantage of flexibility in the mathematical model that many companies use to calculate options expenses, known as the Black-Scholes method. It allows them to make assumptions about the future volatility of their stocks, how long the options will be outstanding and even how many might never be exercised.

Companies are "trying to find ways to keep the expense down. One of the ways to do that is to choose the most favorable assumptions you can," says Mark M. Reilly, a partner at compensation consultants 3C LLC in Chicago. "They're working within the system. Part of the problem is the system probably allows them too much flexibility."

For example, the measure of a stock's price swings can sharply affect options expense and thus pretax earnings, Mr. Reilly says. Take an option granted at $10 a share that must be exercised within five years. The value of that option will fall by a third, he says, if a company assumes the stock price might swing by 30% -- that is, between $7 and $13 during the five years -- rather than volatility of 50%, or a swing between $5 and $15.

In calculating its potential options expense for fiscal 2003, Dell earlier this year changed its volatility assumption to 43%, compared with 60% if the company continued to use its historical approach. It used to use a volatility number based on its stock performance for the most recent five years. But now it is making its own estimate of its stock's "expected volatility," according to its annual report. Using the lower number, in part because of the stock-market downturn, Dell shaved its options expense by nearly 20%, says Brian Foley, a White Plains, N.Y., executive-compensation consultant.

Dell last year issued 84 million options at an average grant price of $11.41 with an estimated life of five years. If treated as an expense, those options would have lowered net income by $712 million, according to Dell's new formula.

Dell says it stopped using a historical approach because "our stock has been much less volatile in the last year than in the five years prior," spokesman Michael Maher says. "Given that fact, calculating volatility from a historical perspective is not as accurate as doing it on a forward-looking basis."

Some market specialists agree market volatility is coming down as big segments of the stock market flatten. "Lower assumptions are consistent with what we're seeing" in indexes that measure volatility, says Robert Bliss, a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. VIX, an index published by the Chicago Board Options Exchange, measures volatility in the stocks in the Standard & Poor's 100-stock index and is down 26% this year.

Companies would like to make adjustments to calculations this year so they are ready when the Financial Accounting Standards Board, the private-sector group that oversees accounting treatments, enacts a rule for expensing options. That decision could come as soon as March 2004. Because options are expensed over their expected life, typically three to six years, cutting the expense this year will reduce the bite when it counts.

Genentech, whose financial filings say the assumptions are "highly subjective," also has cut its stock-volatility estimate, to 43% from 63%. Oracle chopped its assumption to 57% from 76% for fiscal 2001, its filings show. EBay Inc. cut its assumption to 68% from 81% a year earlier and says it should decline again this year, further reducing the bite of its options.

"It's not that we're doing things to the methodology, it's that stock-market conditions have changed," says Louis J. Lavigne Jr., Genentech's chief financial officer. Sharp declines in volatility show "how erratic these calculations are going to be. It proves the point these are better placed in the footnotes than on the face of the financial report," he says.

Companies beyond high technology also are rethinking key assumptions. Apache Corp., Hilton Hotels Corp. and Stanley Works have cut the volatility estimates and expected lives of their options, says Jack T. Ciesielski, editor of the Analyst's Accounting Observer in Baltimore. As with a reduction in expected volatility, a reduction in expected life cuts options expense.

In all, 23 of the companies in the S&P 500-stock index used a double-barrel approach to paring options expense -- shortening expected life and volatility estimates this year, he says. Noting the latitude the Black-Scholes method allows in deciding such factors as volatility and expected life, Mr. Foley, the executive-compensation specialist, says: "In those two numbers, there is to some extent more art than science."
美国公司寻求减少期权费用

美国公司目前还不必把员工股票期权记作费用，不过许多大公司已经纷纷采取措施以减轻此举对利润的影响。

对于戴尔电脑(Dell Computer Corp.)、Genentech Inc.和甲骨文公司(Oracle Corp)这类发行大量期权的迅速成长型公司，将期权记入费用的要求将使它们最近几年的盈利变为亏损。

眼下，在这一规定明年年初施行之前，这三家公司和其他许多公司正在调整计算期权价值的方法，以降低费用。这样一来，它们可以利用Black-Scholes算术模型的灵活性来计算期权费用。该方法使它们自行假设未来股票的波幅、期权发行在外的时间、以及甚至也许永远不会行使的期权数量。

福利咨询公司3C LLC的合伙人Mark M. Reilly表示，公司正在想方设法寻找降低费用的办法，其中之一就是尽可能选择最有利的假设条件。

Reilly表示，股价波动区间的设定能够大大影响期权费用乃至税前利润。举例来说，期权价格为10美元，必须在5年内行使。如果公司假定股价波幅为30%，即股价在7-13美元，这些期权的价值将减少1/3。

在计算2003财政年度潜在的期权费用时，戴尔电脑今年早些时候将波幅假设调整为43%, 而如果继续沿用按最近5年股价计算的方法，波幅应为60%。但它现在自己对股票预期波幅进行了估算。而数值降低（部份原因在于股市的下滑）后，戴尔的期权费用削减了近20%。

戴尔去年发行了8400万股期权，平均价格为11.41美元，行使期限为5年。如果将其记入费用，根据该公司的新计算公式，这些期权将使公司净利润减少7.12亿美元。

戴尔的发言人Michael Maher称，停止使用历史计算法是因为在过去的一年中公司股票的波动程度大大低于前5年。因此，从历史的角度计算波幅不如从前瞻的角度那样准确。

部份市场专业人士认为，随著市场的大部份领域走势趋平，股价波动程度有所下降。芝加哥联邦储备银行(Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago)的高级经济学家Robert Bliss称，调低假设和衡量波动幅度的指数变化是一致的。芝加哥期权交易所(Chicago Chicago Board Options Exchange)公布的VIX指数衡量的是标准普尔100指数成份股的波动状况，该指数今年下跌了26%。

各公司希望能在今年完成计算方法的调整，以便在财务会计标准委员会(Financial Accounting Standards Board)正式颁布此项规定之际顺利完成转变。新的规定可能于2004年3月公布。因为期权在其预期年限（通常为3-6年）内记作费用，今年削减此项费用将降低以后的影响。

Genentech也将股价波幅预期由63%下调至43%，甲骨文公司将其波幅假设由2001财年的76%调低至57%。EBay Inc.则由去年的81%调至68%，并表示今年将再度下降，更进一步缓解期权费用化的不利影响。

Genentech的首席财务长Louis J. Lavigne Jr称，并不是计算方法的改变，而是股市状况发生了变化。波幅的大幅下降表明今后的计算数据将是多变的。

高科技以外的公司也在重新考虑关键的假设问题。Analyst's Accounting Observer的编辑Jack T. Ciesielski 称，Apache Corp.、希尔顿酒店(Hilton Hotels Corp.)和Stanley Works已经下调了波幅估值和期权预期年限。随著预期波幅的降低，预期年限的减少也有助于降低期权费用。

总体而言，标准普尔500指数成份股中的23家公司都使用了波幅和年限双下调的方法来削减期权费用。