Until so far, the leases are accounted for separating the operational leases from the finance leases and the former is accounted as an expense usually when the lease payments are made. This is about to change and the proposal of the joint project of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) is to accounting the operational lease in the same way that a finance lease is accounted, namely recognizing at the beginning of the contract an asset and a liability, instead recognizing an expense for the use of the asset. Knowing this I test whether the accounting of an operational lease as a finance lease is more value relevant for the investors, due to the IASB says that improves the quality and comparability of financial reporting. The sample consists of the largest firms of the Stoxx Europe 600 at the end of the eight years from 2005 to 2012 excluding financial firms. Using a regression on price, my results suggest that the investor incorporates that information in the price of the stocks. These results confirm the assumption of the IASB that the accounting of the operational leases as a finance lease provides information which is much more useful. This is a very important topic since the leasing is a major industry and a very important source of finance for a wide range of entities.

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Lease,operational lease,value relevance,IASB