Impact of Lease Capitalization on Financial Ratios of Listed German Companies

Abstract

The separation of leases into operating and finance leases for accounting purposes can result in incentives to favour operating lease contracts since they avoid on-balance sheet debt. The IASB is conducting an active research project on leasing, following the G4+1 group's research on possible improvements to lease accounting. One discussed alternative suggests treating all leases similar to today's finance leasing. Previous studies have simulated this accounting treatment following the Imhoff/Lipe/Wright (1991, 1997) constructive capitalization method. Our study is - to our knowledge - the first simulation for Germany based on a modified constructive capitalization method and, additionally, a factor model used by Standard & Poor's (CreditStats®). In line with prior literature, our results show notable changes in a variety of financial ratios. Clustering the sample into different industries, we detect significant differences between industry groups. However, the relative ratio-based ranking of the sample companies does not change much. Additionally, we observe that the CreditStats® - model yields fairly comparable results.

Keywords: leases, constructive capitalization, off-balance sheet, Tweedie approach

JEL Classification: M41, M43, M44, M47, G12, G29