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Every day, landlords and tenants are confronted with the dilemma of financing tenant improvements. Both parties see financing tenant improvements as a necessity. The landlord sees his tenant improvement investment as a necessity to consummate leasing transactions, while the tenant sees its tenant improvement investment as a necessity to build out vacant space. But at the end of the day, the investment dilutes the balance sheet for both parties since tenant improvements are non‐earning depreciating assets with no residual value. This paper introduces a new financing methodology for tenant improvements that take both the landlord and tenant out of the business of financing these non‐earning assets.

Sees the objective of teaching financial management to be to help managers and potential managers to make sensible investment and financing decisions. Acknowledges that financial theory teaches that investment and financing decisions should be based on cash flow and risk. Provides information on payback period; return on capital employed, earnings per share effect, working capital, profit planning, standard costing, financial statement planning and ratio analysis. Seeks to combine the practical rules of thumb of the traditionalists with the ideas of the financial theorists to form a balanced approach to practical financial management for MBA students, financial managers and undergraduates.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between off-balance-sheet (OBS) operating leases and long-term debt by analyzing firms’ debt risk profiles measured by the constraints on firms in the financial ratios in their debt covenants.

This study determines debt risk profiles using three measures: the ex ante probability of covenant violation (Demerjian and Owens, 2016), firms in violation of debt covenants and firms close to covenant violations.

High-risk firms according to all three measures, on average, have a significantly lower level of operating leases, indicating that these firms use OBS leases as a substitute for long-term debt. Interestingly, for firms operating in industries in which leases are widely available, firms with a high probability of covenant violation have a significantly higher level of operating leases, indicating that these firms use OBS leases as a complement to long-term debt. Further analysis indicates that lease financing is less costly than debt financing for these firms.

Overall, evidence of this study indicates that firms facing financial constraints may attempt to lease more of their assets, but the availability of leasing is constrained by their debt covenant obligations and the strength of the leasing market in its industry.

This study identifies states in which risky firms may treat leases as either complements or substitutes for long-term debt, implying that the leasing decision relates to the availability of an active leasing market for a firm’s assets and the firm’s financial constraints. The findings of this study support recent research showing that debt and leases are complementary in the presence of counterparty risk providing insight into the paradoxical relationship identified in prior research between leases and long-term debt.

Introduction: Micro and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) represent approximately 99.7% of enterprises in the EU, USA, Japan and about 98.7% in the Republic of Moldova. They provide two-thirds of private sector jobs and contribute more than half of the total value added created by existing businesses. Under these conditions, various action programmes are adopted to increase the competitiveness of SMEs through research and innovation and to improve access to finance. In addition, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has stimulated new reflections on economic recovery, reconstruction and strengthening the resilience of SMEs.

Aim: This chapter aims to give an overview of the SME development, the credit market, access to finance and leasing and to analyse the regulatory framework in terms of quantitative and qualitative criteria for SME classification and the advantages and shortcomings of credit guarantees in the Republic of Moldova. Moreover, in doing this it aims to examine the credit market trends in the SMEs sector and their impact on SMEs’ performance and development.

Method: This chapter uses quantitative data for trend analyses in order to investigate the SMEs access to the credit market, the effectiveness of SME potential funding sources in the Republic of Moldova and the impact of the pandemic on SME development.

Findings: The study found significant and positive role of the credit market in the SME sector development and positive impact on SME performance and economic development. Thus, the study concluded that in order for SMEs to remain competitive and profitable it is very important that they focus on innovation and continuously seek ways to access financial resources on the credit market. During the recent financial crisis, numerous commercial banks focussed considerable attention to SME funding via lending facilities and programmes specifically dedicated to the SME sector.

Originality of the Study: This chapter provides evidence on SME access to finance on the Moldovan credit market over the 2015–2020 period by using statistics on credit to both financial and non-financial markets and offers new insights into the topic area by emphasising the importance of the SMEs financing portfolio for the Moldova economic development.

Implications: The results of this chapter suggest that the future research would be aided by improvements in the collection of more data on the pandemic period and new financial techniques and practical products available on the credit market of SME.

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate how a grounded theory method applied to a case study within a particular industrial context can be used to derive a substantive model of the practice of capital budgeting and contribute to an understanding of contextual elements that affect investment decisions. This study aims to examine how the investment decision to acquire aircraft, strategic core assets, is made by small players within an industry that is small by world standards, Australian regional aviation.

This research adopts a grounded theory approach to the case study. Primary data were collected using questionnaires, semi‐structured and open‐ended interviews. Secondary data comprised pro‐forma aircraft lease contracts and information from a law firm. Consistent with grounded theory, qualitative research mining software (Leximancer) was used to facilitate initial analyses of data and understanding of decision factors and their relationships. The model was derived, refined and confirmed using data from follow‐up unstructured interviews.

This research within a specific industrial context finds that a substantive model derived through a grounded theory approach provides an understanding of the richness of the investment scenario and the decision factors considered in the capital budgeting decision. Reflection on such narrow industrial findings in terms of existing theories provides insight into the reasons for the gap between practice and theory.

This research is original in that it employs a grounded theory approach, which has received little attention within prior literature, to derive a substantive model based on industrial practice of managers who are instrumental in and responsible for a capital budgeting decision. Such an alternative approach to modelling is of value in bridging the gap between practice and theory. Substantive models produced for different industries or contexts can be compared and similarities refined into a theory that is grounded in practice. Dissimilarities may provide valuable insights into variables and processes that are unique to particular contexts.

Academic discussion of leasing has sought to provide possible explanations for its widespread use. Generally, taxation is regarded as the dominant factor in the decision to lease. Myers, Diil & Bautista, prominent in the area of lease evaluation, came to the conclusion that the tax benefit of leasing seemed to be

Synthetic leases, used by some retailers to finance rapid expansion, could be ticking time bombs that might blow up anytime in the USA. This paper has three objectives. First, it provides an overview of the financing technique in the USA by tracing its origin and pin‐pointing its advantages and drawbacks. It shows that the drawbacks tend to outweigh the benefits. Second, it discusses how some retailers were red‐flagged for using it and how they responded to such undesirable exposure. The third objective is to highlight the more stringent accounting regulations recently imposed by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) on synthetic leases in the USA.

The purpose of this paper is to review empirical research on the determinants of leasing.

The paper reviews previous literature that has focused on studying the determinants of leasing decisions. It also discusses the determinants of the lease‐buy decision and the determinants of the choice between finance leases and operating leases.

Previous empirical studies show that there is no consensus as to whether debt and leases are complements or substitutes. However, there are some factors that affect the choice between leases and debt, such as size, taxes, nature of assets, financial constraints and management compensation. Leases tend to be more prevalent in some industries (such as air transport, retailing and services and utilities) than in others, and companies tend to lease assets that are less specific, of general usage and more liquid. Previous studies also show that higher leverage companies tend to use leases rather than other forms of financing.

The paper only addresses the determinants of leasing. Previous studies about leases address other areas such as the lease accounting standards and the economic consequences and valuation of leases, which are not discussed in this paper.

The paper presents an exhaustive review of previous literature on the determinants of leasing. Evidence from research on this topic is likely to be helpful in capital market investment decisions, accounting standard setting and decisions on corporate financial disclosure.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the determinants of leasing decisions for a sample of China’s non-financial small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Pooled ordinary least squares and Tobit models are used to analyze five years of data (2009-2013) on the sample units, to find the determinants of leasing decisions after controlling for industry. In order to assess the robust of the results, the authors further apply instrumental variables methods.

The results suggest that CEO ownership, tax rate, financial distress potential, and firm size are positively related to the operating lease share, whereas debt ratio, profitability, and tangibility are negatively linked to the operating lease share. In contrast, capital lease share increases with debt ratio, profitability, firm size, and strong corporate governance; it decreases with CEO ownership and financial distress potential.

Using a small sample might not be enough capture industry effects. Future research may gain more insights using sufficient sample and considering the types of leases as well as leased assets.

This study offers evidences to the policy-makers who may adopt the practices to promote the development of leasing market. Furthermore, these results provide important implications to lessors in making operating strategy decisions and to potential lessees in making financing decisions.

To the authors’ limited knowledge, this is the first study on leasing relies on publicly traded Chinese SMEs. The results of this study enrich the literature on the determinants of leasing in several ways.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between a firm's propensity to lease and several firm characteristics: tax position, financial constraint, ownership structure, growth, and size.

Controlling for industry, total lease share, operating and capital lease share ratios, obtained using an income statement approach, are regressed on a trichotomous tax variable, a dichotomous cash flow coverage ratio variable, debt over fixed assets, ownership concentration, market to book value of shares and the natural log of sales.

Total lease share increases with leverage, tax position and growth; it decreases with cash flow coverage, ownership concentration and firm size. Results for operating lease share are similar to those for total lease share. In contrast, capital lease share decreases with tax position and increases with ownership concentration and size.

The results suggest that leasing offers added debt capacity and increases in financially constrained firms. Firms that pay high taxes seem to place more value on the constant stream of tax deductions from the rental payments than on deductions from decreasing interest costs and amortization. Finally, highly concentrated Canadian firms may use less leasing because they are more family‐controlled.

The literature offers mixed reasons for firms' decisions to lease or purchase assets. This study provides further evidence in a rich setting. In 2001, the Canadian tax authorities changed the tax treatment of leases, thus providing an opportunity to validate prior results on the impact of taxes on leasing. By including two different measures of financial constraint, this study disentangles the substitution and the added debt capacity hypotheses.