The Securities and Exchange Commission unanimously approved Friday a proposal to reinstate a requirement that publicly traded companies disclose more information about their short-term borrowings. The aim of the proposal is to prevent companies from hiding liquidity problems by dressing up their balance sheets at the end of a quarter. The new requirement is a reversal of a 1994 decision by the SEC to eliminate a similar reporting requirement -- one of a series of deregulatory moves that the SEC and other regulators made in the 1990s that arguably worsened the recent financial crisis. The proposal, which will be subject to 60 days of public comment before final action by the commission, would require companies to report each quarter their average daily or monthly amount of outstanding short-term debt, the maximum level of those borrowings and their weighted average interest rate. Had such a requirement not been repealed in 1994, investors might have noticed the growing liquidity problems of Lehman Brothers Holdings, which used transactions it called Repo 105 and Repo 108 to reduce its short-term borrowings shortly before the end of each quarter in 2007 and 2008. That discovery, which came in a bankruptcy examiner's report issued in March on the Lehman collapse, was a primary reason that the SEC moved quickly to reinstate the short-term borrowings requirement, according to people involved in the project at the commission. SEC officials declined to comment on the Lehman situation specifically. The company, which is in bankruptcy proceedings, and several of its former executives are under investigation by the commission's enforcement division for actions related to Lehman's demise. Mary L. Schapiro, the chairwoman of the SEC, said at the commission's meeting Friday that the new regulations address problems that became evident during the financial crisis, but which were not addressed by the Dodd-Frank financial regulation law enacted this summer. 'Under these proposals, investors would have better information about a company's financing activities during the course of a reporting period -- not just a period-end snapshot,' Schapiro said. 'With this information, investors would be better able to evaluate the company's ongoing liquidity and leverage risks.' In what could be considered an oblique reference to the SEC's Lehman investigation, another commissioner said that unless the agency accompanied the new rules with strong enforcement measures, the rules would not prevent companies from trying to misrepresent their financial condition. 'Individuals and entities will always have incentives to dress up the balance sheet and look for the new Repo 105,' the commissioner, Luis A. Aguilar, said, citing as examples Enron's drive to create a false appearance of growing profitability, and corporate accounting scandals involving options backdating. 'There should be serious consequences that everyone can see,' Aguilar said. 'Rules on the books are not enough -- they need to be enforced.' The reporting requirements do not go into effect immediately, but the commission also approved an interpretive release reminding companies that under current law they could not use financing structures -- including off-balance sheet securities or investments -- aimed at masking their reported financial condition. Bank holding companies are already required to report data on their short-term borrowings annually, but nonbank companies will be facing the requirements for the first time since 1994. Only financial companies are subject to stricter requirements on average daily borrowings. Nonfinancial companies must report at least monthly averages. Those details of a company's liquidity and short-term financings are to be included in the management discussion and analysis section of a company's quarterly and annual reports. In a 95-page release explaining the proposed rules and outlining areas on which it is seeking comment, the commission said that the 1994 requirements were repealed because of 'practical difficulties involved in gathering the data and preparing meaningful disclosure.' At the time, the commission said it believed that the elimination of details on short-term borrowings would not harm investors, because they would be getting enough information in other areas of a company's financial reports. 'We note that some of those practical difficulties may be less relevant today because of technological advancements in accounting systems that have become more widely used by companies since 1994,' the commission said. Two commissioners, Kathleen L. Casey and Troy A. Paredes, said they were particularly interested in hearing from the public on the costs and burdens that the new disclosure requirements would impose on companies. The new SEC rules follow the disclosure earlier this year that Lehman Brothers regularly employed such off-balance sheet devices to temporarily remove securities from its balance sheet at the end of each reporting period. 