There has been a flurry of analysis in the past couple months about Financial Accounting Standards 13 (FAS 13), proposed new lease accounting standards from the U.S. Financial Accounting Standards Board and the International Accounting Standards Board. The standards would require all lease liabilities to be accounted for on corporate balance sheets as capital leases rather than as operating leases.
We tried to summarize some of the implications for retail real estate in a recent piece. Our sister publication NREI also examined the issue in a piece in September.
But there are several other good primary reports out there that folks in the industry should find of interest.
PwC issued a report in May that can be downloaded if you register at their site.
Newmark Knight Frank also issued an analysis, "Proposed Changes to Current Lease Accounting Standards: FASB and IASB Preliminary Views". It can be downloaded directly from their site.
Similarly, Jones Lang LaSalle has a report "What to make of new lease accounting rules", that can be downloaded here, or viewed in the Scribd box below.
JLL Perspectives Lease Accounting 2010
Ernst & Young has an 88-page report that came out in September that delves pretty deeply into what the proposed changes mean.
Lastly--courtesy of Scott Pollock & Steve Latkovic at The Commercial Real Estate Insider, here are Scribd embeds of an ongoing series of documents being produced by CBRE analyzing the change.
CBRE - Lease Accounting Changes