Leasing : why are some companies averse to capitalize their operating

Abstract

In august 2010 IASB and FASB published an Exposure Draft with proposed changes to the current IAS 17 -­‐ leases. To get an understanding of how the affected companies perceive the changes, I assessed a large number of the letters. Based on this, I created a taxonomy of six different sectors to categorise their views. As expected, there was a stark contrast between the comment letters across the sectors. However, what I found more interesting was a significant deviation in the opinions within two of the sectors I assessed. These were not only about minor changes but also regarding the major change; elimination of differentiation between an operating and finance lease. To find an explanation to why some supported the change and others were in disfavour of it, I created a data set with different explanatory variables. I tested the variables against the companies that were supportive and disfavoured the elimination in a regression model to see if there was any pattern. The results showed evidence that disagreeing companies were more exposed to operational leases. However, the specific reason to this is not clear from the result. Based on a combination of the findings in the taxonomy and statistical results, one may argue that it could be a combination of how the leasing intensive companies are able to comply with the changes and whether or not they are worried about how the consequences of the exposure draft will affect their financial ratios.