Deutsche Telekom AG, which launched its campaign to win hearts and minds for its flotation on Wednesday, says it intends to issue a single balance sheet for Germany and the US but that it had not achieved a breakthrough with US securities officials. German accounting procedures require minimal disclosure, and apparantly profitable German companies would turn out to be chronic loss-makers under US accounting rules. So the phone company has not found a way to draw up its accounts in a way satisfactory to the US Securities & Exchange Commission. It intends to issue just one balance sheet and simply include footnotes that outline how items in the balance sheet differed according to German and US rules. The fact that Telekom is not a manufacturing company minimizes the differences between the systems.
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