Considering the accounting transition and the differences between the international and
the Brazilian standard (in force until 2007) (CARVALHO ET AL., 2011), we argue that the
decision-making process of the firm, based on financial indicators, may have been affected, as
these indicators may have been altered due to the convergence. Changes in the accounting
treatment of financial leasing, and in the recognition of exchange and conversion rates may
have caused impacts on debt ratios. Thus, considering that the event may have altered the
temporal behavior of such ratios, analysts’ forecasts based on the long-term behavior of timeseries
of debt ratios would suffer bias if we do not recognize the impact of the event on the
referred time-series ratios.