Repo 105 is Lehman Brothers' name for an accounting maneuver that it used where a short-term repurchase agreement is classified as a sale.
Repo 105 was used by investment bank Lehman Brothers three times according to a March 2010 report by the bankruptcy court examiner.
After the Examiner's report was published, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sent letters to chief financial officers of nearly two dozen large financial and insurance companies asking about their firms' use of repurchase agreements, including the number and amount of such agreements that qualify for sales accounting, and detailed analysis of why such transactions can be treated as sales.
SEC chairman, Mary Schapiro, indicated that the agency was trying to determine whether other companies used similar techniques as the "repo 105" used by Lehman Brothers.
[7] The Wall Street Journal drew attention to the increasing levels of fees that Ernst & Young had been paid by Lehman from 2001 to 2008.