Why would a manufacturer finance a bank's capital expenditure?

Usually a manufacturing company goes to a bank to finance its capital expenditure. But last month witnessed a deal where the US manufacturing giant GE stepped forward to finance the capital expenditure of one of the largest banks in the world – JPMorgan Chase – when the latter decided to buy 1.4 million LED bulbs to replace the lighting across 5,000 branches in the world’s largest single-order LED installation to date.

As a finance person, the first explanation that I looked at was the credit rating. GE lost its much vaunted AAA rating during the Global Financial crisis, but based on S&P long term unsecured ratings, GE’s AA+ rating is full five notches above JPMorgan Chase’ A- rating. Based on Moodys ratings, the gap is only two notches. Averaging the two and taking into account S&P’s negative outlook on GE, we could say that GE enjoys a rating that is a full letter grade (three notches) above JPMorgan. So perhaps, it makes sense for the manufacturer to finance the bank.

Another possible explanation is that trade credit has a set of advantages that are not fully understood. Some of the alleged advantages of trade credit (like the idea that a business relationship leads to superior information on credit worthiness) strain credulity when the recipient of the credit is one of the largest banks in the world with hundreds of publicly traded bonds outstanding. Similarly, the idea that vendor financing is a superior form of performance guarantee is hard to believe when the vendor is a manufacturing giant with such a high reputation and credit rating.

In a Slate story, Daniel Gross explained the logic in terms of the inefficiency and inertia of corporate bureaucracies:

The second barrier – “the capital barrier,” as Irick call it – is more difficult to surmount. The economics of buying and installing them can be a challenge to corporate bureaucrats. Companies often produce multiyear budgets well in advance. Going LED means spending a lot of money in a single year to buy and install them, make sure they work, and dispose of the old ones. And it is difficult even for a company like Chase to make a decision quickly to write a check to buy 1.4 million new light bulbs and pay for their installation. GE, of course, has a long track record of helping to finance customers’ purchases of its capital goods, structuring payments over a period of years rather than upfront.

That perhaps makes more sense than any of the finance theory arguments.

Posted at 4:44 pm IST on Sun, 20 Mar 2016         permanent link

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