Fannie: No Earnings Reports Until After 2Q '06:

Fannie Mae, which last reported earnings more than a year ago, will not disclose any profits until after mid-year 2006, a move that could allow the New York Stock Exchange to de-list the Congressionally chartered mortgage giant.Fannie made the disclosure about both its earnings and the right of the NYSE to de-list the company after the market closed on Tuesday in a form 12b-25 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In a conference call Wednesday morning Fannie CEO Daniel Mudd said the company would restate earnings for 2001 through 2004 after June 30, 2006 and that earnings for 2005 "would follow that" but offered no specific timetable. The company said it would spend $420 million in restatement-related costs this year alone. Fannie is expected to restate prior years' earnings by almost $13 billion. One analyst on the conference call asked Mr. Mudd why it will take the company two years to begin reporting again when it took Freddie Mac -- also faced with an accounting scandal -- just 11 months to begin disclosing again. Mr. Mudd did not directly answer the question but noted earlier in the call that Fannie needs to record 1 million lines of journal entries and verify 20,000 derivatives transactions. (See the Monday August 15 edition of National Mortgage News for more detail.)