How big is GE Capital?

• In a letter to the Federal Reserve in May, General Electric (NYSE:GE) said its finance arm had $501B in total assets at the end of 2014, enough to rank it as the country’s seventh largest bank.
• Just weeks earlier, however, GE had used a different number - $363B - in a presentation to investors and analysts.
• The $138B separating the two figures is the difference between what official accounting rules require (sent to the Fed) and what GE calls "ending net investment" (an in-house metric the company rolled out seven years ago when it was under pressure during the financial crisis), WSJ reports.
• "We disclose ENI in addition to total assets so that our investors can better assess our total capital invested in financial services," GE spokesman Seth Martin said.
• To accounting experts, however, it could just be another in a long line of "pro forma" figures that companies have trotted out over the years to show their business in a better light.