Sen. Phil Gramm, chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, issued the following statement on the decision of the Financial Accounting Standards Board to delay the effective date of the new standard for reporting derivatives and hedging:

"I congratulate FASB for recognizing the difficulties that this standard poses for publicly traded companies.

"Disclosure of material information is vital to investors and the markets, but to be effective, disclosure must be understandable and consistent.

"This one-year delay should help companies, as well as FASB, fine-tune the systems and rules that will make disclosure meaningful."