Capital Spending to Increase; Employment to Accelerate

The most recent Duke University/CFO Magazine Global Business Outlook Survey noted that optimism among U.S. and Asian chief financial officers jumped this quarter and the hiring outlook is strong for 2012. European CFOs also say 2012 will be an improvement over a difficult 2011. 

These are some of the findings of the most recent quarterly survey, which asked 873 CFOs from a broad range of global public and private companies about their expectations for the economy. 

The U.S. CFO Optimism Index, in which CFOs rate their confidence in the economy on a scale of 0 to 100, increased from 53 last quarter to 59 this quarter, equaling the index's long-term average. 

"This rebound is encouraging because increases in CFO optimism have historically preceded improvements in the overall economy," said John Graham, a professor of finance at Duke's Fuqua School of Business and director of the survey. "Optimism also rebounded in Europe and Asia, suggesting that 2012 should be a better year than 2011. Still, European optimism lags behind the rest of the world." 

The following summary of findings was excerpted from the report: 

U.S. finance chiefs said they plan to increase capital spending by slightly more than 7% and expect to boost tech spending by 6% over the next year. Capital spending growth will be especially strong in the energy and manufacturing sectors. 

U.S. CFOs said they plan to expand their workforces by slightly more than 2% on average over the next 12 months, a staffing increase that would bring the unemployment rate below 8%. Sixty-eight percent of U.S. CFOs say they are actively trying to fill vacant job positions, and many firms are recruiting more aggressively to fill the slots. 

Nearly 40% of U.S. CFOs say their firms will be active in mergers and acquisitions this year. 

Energy Deals Derailed by Obscure Accounting Rule

Nearly a decade after the most elaborate exercise in accounting fraud in America’s history ended in bankruptcy and prison sentences, the U.S. energy industry has yet to escape Enron’s ghost.
Now, courtesy of esoteric changes in accounting standards being implemented by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), we can add energy efficiency and clean energy to the list of casualties killed in the name of transparency.
FASB and the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) develop financial accounting standards for beancounters. In the wake of the Enron debacle, FASB launched an effort to develop new rules for the treatment of lease transactions. In December, FASB released a joint exposure draft for these new rules, which will soon be ready for prime time.
The new guidelines would alter reporting obligations for clean energy and energy-efficiency transactions. In short, businesses would have to bring all of these lease transactions onto their balance sheets. That sucks. Still worse, in the case of energy efficiency and clean energy, the rules will not necessarily benefit the public. Ironically, it may do the opposite by distorting high-priority environmental and energy security policy objectives endorsed by legislators locally and nationally.
Currently, businesses only include capital leases as assets on their balance sheets. By contrast, in an operating lease, the lessee can use an asset without having to assume the responsibility of ownership. The new rules would require all companies to list leases transactions as assets and liabilities on their balance sheets.
This requirement will significantly deter energy-efficiency investments for developers, companies and non-profits by souring the benefits of sale leasebacks and power purchase agreements (PPAs). PPAs are currently treated as service contracts. FASB’s new rule would require PPAs to be treated as leases rather than service contracts, which would appear on a company’s balance sheet.
Although the financial mechanics of these transactions will remain unchanged, companies who pursue energy efficiency or clean energy will have heavier balance sheets and risk being perceived as having higher leverage than they otherwise would. This could make debt more expensive for companies who perform lease transactions. And that is only one penalty for those who pursue clean energy or energy efficiencies who will also likely have higher tax exposure, more extensive disclosure requirements and steeper annual accounting costs.
Simply put, in the tragic tradition of regulatory overreaction epitomized by Sarbanes-Oxley, the “proposed” FASB rule will burn the barn to roast the pig.
Ironically, unlike Enron, companies and institutions investing in clean energy and energy efficiency are not trying to bake the books. Rather, they are pursuing a perfectly legitimate institutional objective – buying electricity or reducing energy costs – and outsourcing the hassle of owning the actual system. After all, most companies and institutions are not in the energy business but dependent on it.

Global Wind Energy Increasing

Wind turbine installations may rise 20 percent this year worldwide and double by 2015, the Global Wind Energy Council said in a statement today.

Capacity to produce electricity from the wind may rise by 40 gigawatts in 2011 from 294.4 gigawatts at the end of last year, the lobby group said in a statement from Brussels. By 2015, it forecasts 450 gigawatts.
“2010 was a tough year for our industry, but 2011 is looking up,” said Steve Sawyer, secretary general for GWEC. “We’ve paid the price for the 2008 and 2009 financial crisis. Now we’re back on track.”  

Source: Bloomberg