In its May 10 edition, Compliance Week reported that lease accounting errors comprised 22.5 percent of the month's weaknesses. In March, less than 10 percent of the weakness disclosures were related to lease accounting issues. 

Compliance Week noted that many of the companies making lease-related disclosures claimed they were being made in the wake of a letter written by the Securities and Exchange Commission's chief accountant to a professional accounting group. The letter, written itself after a wave of restatements to correct lease-related accounting errors, reiterated the rules.

According to an article published by Compliance Week at the time, the SEC's Donald Nicolaisen focused his letter on three issues related to lease accounting: depreciation of the costs to improve leased property, how to recognize periods of free or reduced rent, and how to account for landlord incentives to make improvements. Nicolaisen addressed the letter to Robert Keuppers, chairman of the Center for Public Company Audit Firms, which is an arm of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.