A major finding of the Valukas Report (Volume 3 and Appendix 17) is that Lehman’s balance sheet was distorted by an accounting trick called “Repo 105.” Under normal accounting rules, a firm’s repos are treated as collateralized borrowings, and the collateral is included in the firm’s assets. Under Repo 105, some repos were counted as true sales, removing the collateral from Lehman’s balance sheet. The purpose was to reduce the firm’s reported ratio of assets to equity, a widely watched indicator of its financial health. On May 31, Lehman used Repo 105 to reduce its measured assets by $44.5 billion.