Exclusive: commercial loans jumps in March: ELF

By Lynn Adler

NEW YORK | Wed Apr 25, 2011 at 2: 57 pm EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters)-a key measure of u.s. business activity jumped in March as companies accelerate loans for new equipment, said the creditor group Reuters on Monday.

Equipment leasing and Finance Association (ELF) said US firms was 6.2 billion dollars of loans and lines of credit, those in March, 44 percent from a year ago, and 51 percent from February's 4.1 billion dollars.

"We are on the 11th straight month of year-over new trade volume improvements," ELF President and CEO William Sutton said in an interview. "We are still optimistic on recovery continues."

The group represents the lenders who financed half of the capital investment in the United States each year.

Demand is strong, the commercial establishments in different sectors, said Sutton. In technology, "we see businesses replacing ageing equipment and increase capacity in the IT world", and this trend will continue, he said.

Some of the characteristics of the credit quality of the erosion of the month, but he jumps from the same period a year ago.

ELF said 3.5 percent of borrowers 30 days or more late, compared to 3.1 percent in February. But this rate has fallen 17 percent in March 2010.

Fee loans which reflect the compromise unlikely, that should be returned, slightly increased to 1.3% in March from 1% in February, but improved from 1,5% a year earlier.

Creditors approved a 77 per cent of capital expenditure of credit applications in March, up from 76 percent in February.

The total number of persons for financial companies which equipment remained flat for the fifth straight month, but fell by 2 percent from a year ago. The construction was the weakest sector.

ELF, which indicates economic activity in the sector of finance equipment 521 billion dollars, provides his monthly report to Reuters the day before its official release.

ELF members include Bank of America (BAC.N), CIT Group (CIT.N), Caterpillar Inc. (CAT.N) Caterpillar Financial Services Corp., Deere and co. 's (DE.N) John Deere financial, Siemens Ag, Siemens (SIEGn. DE), financial services, and Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ.N) Verizon Capital Corp. affiliate, mj.

(Editing By Dave Zimmerman)

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