Companies which lease essential equipment such as cranes, computers, lorries and industrial machinery have been hard hit by the recession, with the value of new contracts signed down 28% at €4.5bn last year, the Financieele Dagblad reports on Monday.

‘Our sector is a thermometer for industrial health,’ said Jan Kusters, chairman of the lease sector association NVL and director of Rabobank’s lease subsidiary De Lage Landen.
The figures do not include the lease car sector.
In particular, transport-associated lease companies have taken a battering, with new contracts down 44% in value at €1.2bn. But the value of IT lease contracts is virtually unchanged, the FD said.
Kusters told the FD the reduction in new contracts is not a particularly serious problem because customers are opting for longer leases in order to drive down monthly costs.
‘Lease companies are keeping their customers,’ he was quoted as saying. The real problems are facing machinery makers themselves, he told the paper.