巴菲特致股东的信（1998年）⑩会计问题：第一部分

Accounting -- Part 1

Our General Re acquisition put a spotlight on an egregious flaw in accounting procedure. Sharp-eyed shareholders reading our proxy statement probably noticed an unusual item on page 60. In the pro-forma statement of income -- which detailed how the combined 1997 earnings of the two entities would have been affected by the merger -- there was an item stating that compensation expense would have been increased by $63 million.

会计问题：第一部分

我们与通用再保险之间的并购案反映出会计原则一直以来存在的一个重大瑕疵，眼尖的股东在阅读合并相关的股东文件时，应该都会发现其中有一项不寻常的项目，在制式的损益表中，清楚说明了合并对两者 1997 年的合并收益的影响，其中有一项薪资费用因为合并而增加了 6,300 万美元。

This item, we hasten to add, does not signal that either Charlie or I have experienced a major personality change. (He still travels coach and quotes Ben Franklin.) Nor does it indicate any shortcoming in General Re's accounting practices, which have followed GAAP to the letter. Instead, the pro-forma adjustment came about because we are replacing General Re's longstanding stock option plan with a cash plan that ties the incentive compensation of General Re managers to their operating achievements. Formerly what counted for these managers was General Re's stock price; now their payoff will come from the business performance they deliver.

我必须特别强调一下，这个科目并不代表查理跟我的原则发生了任何重大的改变(他还是乘坐经济舱出行，并引用富兰克林的话)，同时也不表示通用再保险本身的会计政策有何疏失之处，该公司业已完全依照一般公认会计原则运作。相反，形式上的调整是因为，我们正用一个现金奖励计划取代通用再保险长期以来的股票期权计划。

The new plan and the terminated option arrangement have matching economics, which means that the rewards they deliver to employees should, for a given level of performance, be the same. But what these people could have formerly anticipated earning from new option grants will now be paid in cash. (Options granted in past years remain outstanding.)

新奖励计划将通用再保险经理人的激励性薪酬与他们的经营业绩挂钩，而此前与这些经理人利益息息相关的是公司的股价，现在，他们的回报完全要看他们各自负责业务的绩效表现。新计划与终止的认股期权计划对公司员工来说具有相同的经济效益，也就是说在相同的表现之下，公司给予员工奖励是同样的，只不过原先大家预期可以获得的股票将以现金取代，至于先前已经发放的期权则予以保留。

Though the two plans are an economic wash, the cash plan we are putting in will produce a vastly different accounting result. This Alice-in-Wonderland outcome occurs because existing accounting principles ignore the cost of stock options when earnings are being calculated, even though options are a huge and increasing expense at a great many corporations. In effect, accounting principles offer management a choice: Pay employees in one form and count the cost, or pay them in another form and ignore the cost. Small wonder then that the use of options has mushroomed. This lop-sided choice has a big downside for owners, however: Though options, if properly structured, can be an appropriate, and even ideal, way to compensate and motivate top managers, they are more often wildly capricious in their distribution of rewards, inefficient as motivators, and inordinately expensive for shareholders.

虽然两项计划在经济实质上相当，但我们实施的现金奖励计划在会计帐面上却相当不利，这种爱莉丝梦游仙境的结果主要是因为，现有的会计原则在计算公司盈利时，根本上忽略认股票期权的成本，虽然期权成本早已成为许多大企业庞大且不断增加的负担。事实上，会计原则给予公司经理人一个相当弹性的空间，若你以现金形式支付员工回报，就必须计入成本，但若你以另一种期权形式支付则不必。因此，员工股票期权已经到了过度泛滥的地步就不足为奇了。然而，一面倒地采用期权方式对公司的股东利益却非常不利，虽然我承认，如果期权结构合理，有时候是可以成为一种理想补偿和激励高级经理人的好方法，只是大部分的时候，他们通常过于慷慨，严重损及原有股东利益，并不适合作为一项好的激励工具。

Whatever the merits of options may be, their accounting treatment is outrageous. Think for a moment of that $190 million we are going to spend for advertising at GEICO this year. Suppose that instead of paying cash for our ads, we paid the media in ten-year, at-the-market Berkshire options. Would anyone then care to argue that Berkshire had not borne a cost for advertising, or should not be charged this cost on its books?

不过不管股票期权到底有怎样的优点，有关它们的会计处理原则实在是太离谱，试想今年我们预计投入 1.9亿美元在 GEICO 保险汽车保险的广告之上，假若我们不支付现金而改以同等价值的伯克希尔股票期权作为给予厂商的对价，那么有没有人会跳出来说伯克希尔的广告怎么就可以不花一毛钱，难道它不应该反应在公司的会计帐簿之上吗？

Perhaps Bishop Berkeley -- you may remember him as the philosopher who mused about trees falling in a forest when no one was around -- would believe that an expense unseen by an accountant does not exist. Charlie and I, however, have trouble being philosophical about unrecorded costs. When we consider investing in an option-issuing company, we make an appropriate downward adjustment to reported earnings, simply subtracting an amount equal to what the company could have realized by publicly selling options of like quantity and structure. Similarly, if we contemplate an acquisition, we include in our evaluation the cost of replacing any option plan. Then, if we make a deal, we promptly take that cost out of hiding.

或许 Berkeley 大主教(大家或许还记得他是一位哲学家，他曾经提到一棵倒在无人迹深山中的大树的笑话)会真的相信会计师没有发现的成本就代表它不存在，不过要查理跟我接受这样的概念实在是有点困难，当我们考虑要投资一家有发行期权的公司，我们会先将这家公司报告的收益适度向下修正，直接扣除若对外公开发行这些期权所能得到的对价。同样的，要是我们准备要并购一家公司时，我们将会再评估中计入替换原有期权计划的成本，然后等到合并案正式完成后，我们会立即将相关成本反应在会计帐面上。

Readers who disagree with me about options will by this time be mentally quarreling with my equating the cost of options issued to employees with those that might theoretically be sold and traded publicly. It is true, to state one of these arguments, that employee options are sometimes forfeited -- that lessens the damage done to shareholders -- whereas publicly-offered options would not be. It is true, also, that companies receive a tax deduction when employee options are exercised; publicly-traded options deliver no such benefit. But there's an offset to these points: Options issued to employees are often repriced, a transformation that makes them much more costly than the public variety.

在期权问题上与我意见不一致的读者，此时在心理上可能会抗议我将发给员工期权的成本跟对外公开发行的股票期权划上等号。诚然，在这些争辩中，员工期权有时会被回收，使得股东权益受损的程度有可能会减小，公开发行的期权则不会。同样，员工在行使期权时，公司也会获得税收抵免，公开发行的期权也没有这项好处。但在相反一面，员工期权的转换价格常常会做修正，比起公开发行的期权来说，所付出的代价更为高昂。

It's sometimes argued that a non-transferable option given to an employee is less valuable to him than would be a publicly-traded option that he could freely sell. That fact, however, does not reduce the cost of the non-transferable option Giving an employee a company car that can only be used for certain purposes diminishes its value to the employee, but does not in the least diminish its cost to the employer.

还有人认为，对于员工来说，有限售期的员工期权与公开交易的期权相比，其价值要来得低。然而这一事实并没有降低公司发行不可转让期权的成本，就像是公司配给员工的配车，虽然限制员工只能作为公务使用，但是这并不能降低公司买车的成本。

The earning revisions that Charlie and I have made for options in recent years have frequently cut the reported per-share figures by 5%, with 10% not all that uncommon. On occasion, the downward adjustment has been so great that it has affected our portfolio decisions, causing us either to make a sale or to pass on a stock purchase we might otherwise have made.

近年来，查理跟我会对带有期权的账面收益向下修正，通常将每股收益数字砍去 5%，砍 10%的情况也不少见。有时向下调整的幅度太大，以致于影响了我们的投资决策，导致我们要么卖出要么放弃买进。

A few years ago we asked three questions in these pages to which we have not yet received an answer: "If options aren't a form of compensation, what are they? If compensation isn't an expense, what is it? And, if expenses shouldn't go into the calculation of earnings, where in the world should they go?"

几年前，我们就曾提出至今还没有得到解答的三个问题：“如果期权不算是一种补偿的话，那它又算是什么？而如果给予员工的补偿不算是一种成本的话？那它又算是什么？而如果成本不必列入损益表计算收益的话，那么又应该把它们摆到哪里去呢？”