Not disclosed was that the arrangement involved the sale of the transmission grid, the amount of money involved (NZ$701 million) or that the grid was leased back from its new owners for 100 years, but contained a repurchase option after approximately 25 years. Materiality considerations inherent in business-style financial reporting suggest that this information should be provided. The other cross-border leases mentioned in the note related to other parts of the country's high-voltage transmission grid. They had been dealt with similarly in Transpower's financial reports, and had generated no public discussion.
When the nature of this arrangement was explained to the general public, it made headline news. Transpower argued that its accountability obligations had been discharged through the provision of audited financial reports and claimed commercial confidentiality for its unwillingness to provide further information (Gorman, 2005a, c). The financiers for this deal, however, had won a prize for it and an industry publication (Asset Finance International, 2004), had already published some of the information that Transpower declined to divulge (Gorman, 2005e). Thus, Transpower seemed to be managing its ‘communication risks’ through obscure business-style financial reporting.
Scrutiny of Transpower's financial reports reveals that the application of fair value accounting policies contributed to the lack of information about this deal in the financial reports. In the financial year immediately preceding this transaction, Transpower revalued its transmission assets to the latest ‘fair value’, and then changed its accounting policy back to historical cost, announcing that the carrying amounts of all assets would forthwith be regarded as their cost.