SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 4, 1997--Leasing Solutions Inc. (NYSE:LSN), announced today that it had renewed its U.S. syndicated warehousing line of credit with CoreStates Bank, N.A., as agent, and increased availability under the line to $175 million from $155 million.

This facility will be used to finance, on an interim basis, the Company's leasing activities prior to the permanent financing of the lease transactions.

The U.S. syndicated line is led by CoreStates, with the following additional financial institutions participating: Fleet Bank, N. A., The Union Bank of California, N. A., The Sumitomo Bank of California, Wells Fargo Bank, Bank Hapoalim B.M., The First National Bank of Chicago, Harris Trust and Savings Bank, The Bank of Nova Scotia, European American Bank and The Sumitomo Bank Ltd.

"We are very pleased to have signed our U.S. syndicated warehousing line with CoreStates Bank as our agent bank," said Steven L. Yeffa, Leasing Solutions' Vice President, Finance and Chief Financial Officer. "CoreStates' history with the Company, the professionalism of their personnel and the bank's expertise in our industry will help to provide greater flexibility and financial strength in our global financing strategy," added Yeffa.Corestates is recognized as a leader in providing financing for leasing companies. Our Division is extremely proud to have become Agent Bank for an innovative and pioneering leasing company such as Leasing Solutions," stated Hugh Connelly, Corestates' Vice President in the Leasing Division. "The new credit facility gives the company additional options including financing for foreign leases. We look forward to supporting Leasing Solutions' growth for many years," added Connelly.

CoreStates Financial Corporation (NYSE:CFL), a member of the S&P 500, is the parent company of CoreStates Bank, N.A. which is a leading banking service company providing financial services to leasing companies worldwide. It has over $47 billion in assets and focuses on corporate banking, specialized lending, cash management, international trade services and investment banking.

Leasing Solutions is a full-service leasing company that specializes in leasing information processing and communications equipment, principally to large, creditworthy customers. Most leases written by the Company qualify as operating leases. Leasing Solutions has purchased over $1 billion of equipment, representing over 300,000 assets, and currently services over 600 customers.

Based in San Jose, the Company maintains regional leasing offices in the Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York City and San Jose metropolitan areas, as well as in Canada and the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands.

"Safe Harbor" Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: The statements contained in this release which are not historical facts may be deemed to contain forward-looking statements with respect to events, the occurrence of which involve risks and uncertainties, including, without limitation, demand and competition for the Company's lease financing services and the products to be leased by the Company, the continued availability to the Company of adequate financing to support its global expansion, risks and uncertainties of doing business in Europe and Canada and other foreign countries, the ability of the Company and its vendors to recover the Company's investment in equipment through remarketing, the ability of the Company to enter into new strategic alliances and extend existing alliances, the ability of the Company to manage its growth, and other risks or uncertainties detailed in the Company's Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 22, 1998--Leasing Solutions Inc. (NYSE:LSN), announced today that revenue for the three months ended Dec. 31, 1997 advanced 41% to a record $63,961,000 from $45,472,000 for the same period in 1996.

Net income rose 46% to a record $4,058,000 from $2,776,000 a year earlier. Diluted earnings per share for the three months ended Dec. 31, 1997 increased 42% to $0.47 per share compared to $0.33 per share for the same period in 1996.

For the twelve months ended Dec. 31, 1997, revenue increased to a record $225,243,000, 56% above the $144,596,000 reported for the prior year. Net income rose 39% to a record $13,061,000 from $9,373,000, for 1996. Diluted earnings per share for the twelve months ended Dec. 31, 1997 increased 34% to $1.55 per share compared to $1.16 per share for 1996.

"1997 was a dynamic year for us. We expanded into Canada and broadened our European presence with offices in Belgium, France, Germany and the Netherlands. We have established strategic alliances with Vanstar Corporate and Fujitsu PC Corp. Our move to the NYSE in November highlighted our strong financial track record and growth and demonstrated our continuous effort to enhance shareholder value," said Hal Krauter, Leasing Solutions' president and chief executive officer.

"Our geographic expansion and new relationships have enhanced our ability to service a global marketplace. Today, we are positioned to provide worldwide financing solutions for our increasing number of multinational customers. Our significant achievements during 1997 were the product of the commitment and dedication of Leasing Solutions' worldwide team of outstanding employees," added Krauter.

Leasing Solutions is a full-service leasing company that specializes in leasing information processing and communications equipment, principally to large, corporate customers. Most leases written by the company qualify as operating leases. Leasing Solutions has purchased over $1.250 billion of equipment, representing over 300,000 assets, and services over 700 customers.

Based in San Jose, the company maintains regional leasing offices in the Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York City and San Jose metropolitan areas, as well as in Canada, the United Kingdom, Belgium, France, Germany, and the Netherlands. -0-

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 12, 1998--Leasing Solutions, Inc. (NYSE:LSN), a leading lessor of information processing and communications equipment, announced today that it has entered into a strategic alliance with Peregrine Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:PRGN), formerly Apsylog, Inc., to provide Leasing Solutions' customers with lifecycle asset management solutions for their information systems technology requirements.

Leasing Solutions selected Apsylog based on the breadth, flexibility and the large customer installed base of its flagship product, AssetCenter. AssetCenter is a comprehensive decision support system that manages the entire IT asset life-cycle, from asset acquisition, through asset deployment and tracking, to asset retirement.

"Apsylog's end-to-end asset management software product offering, coupled with its worldwide installed base, provides our customers, and particularly our large, global enterprise customers, a superior solution for their total equipment lifecycle planning requirements," said D. Jay DiMarco, Leasing Solutions' Vice President of Marketing and Business Development.We are pleased to have entered into our strategic alliance with Leasing Solutions, providing IT asset management solutions for clients around the world," said Cindy Tilton, Director of Business Development.

About Peregrine Systems

Peregrine Systems is a leading provider of enterprise service desk and asset management solutions to the worldwide market. Peregrine's vision for its enterprise customers is to enable the logical evolution of two management disciplines -- the Consolidated Service Desk so critical to operations management, and the Enterprise Asset Management discipline so essential to profitable management of corporate resources.

A true Infrastructure Management perspective unites these unique disciplines through common shared data, leading to a common understanding of the impact of events and change upon the investment decisions of a company. Founded in 1981, Peregrine Systems has offices in San Diego, Calif.; San Ramon, Calif.; Houston, Texas; the UK; France; Germany; Denmark; and the Netherlands.

About Leasing Solutions

Leasing Solutions is a full-service global leasing company that specializes in leasing information processing and communications equipment, principally to large, corporate customers. Most leases written by the company qualify as operating leases. Leasing Solutions has purchased over $1.250 billion of equipment, representing over 300,000 assets, and services over 700 customers.

Based in San Jose, the company maintains regional leasing offices in the Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York City and San Jose metropolitan areas, as well as in Canada, the United Kingdom, Belgium, France, Germany, and the Netherlands.

Safe Harbor Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995:

The statements contained in this release which are not historical facts may be deemed to contain forward-looking statements with respect to events, the occurrence of which involve risks and uncertainties, including, without limitation, demand and competition for the company's lease financing services and the products to be leased by the company, the continued availability to the company of adequate financing to support its global expansion and activities, risks and uncertainties of doing business in Europe, Canada and other foreign countries, the ability of the company to recover its investment in equipment through remarketing, the ability of the company to enter into new strategic relationships and extend existing strategic relationships, the performance of its strategic partners, the ability of the company to manage its growth, and other risks and uncertainties detailed in the company's Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

General Motors' decision this month to offer discounted four-year leases on nearly all its vehicles could push industrywide leasing to above 15 percent of sales this year.

That's higher than last year, but well short of the 20 percent to 25 percent seen in the late 1990s.

But buyers should beware: While leasing can provide lower monthly payments than a loan, many consumers are better off buying a car with today's discounted finance rates.

For one thing, at the end of the loan, you'll own the car. At the end of the lease, you'll own nothing.

And getting out of a lease -- because a job loss makes meeting the payments difficult or an unexpected baby makes a sports car impractical -- can be tough. You'll likely pay a stiff fee, if the leasing company will let you out at all.

But the biggest problem for those who lease might be overshooting the mileage restrictions. Most leases limit mileage to 12,000 a year. Turn in a car on a three-year lease with more than 36,000 miles, and you'll likely pay 20 cents a mile for the excess.

That was the problem Molly Fannin, 26, of Garfield, N.J., faced. A veteran of two earlier leases, Fannin found herself last summer already beyond the 36,000-mile limit on her Volkswagen Jetta a little more than two years into her three-year lease.

Fortunately for Fannin, Volkswagen bailed her out. Afraid that quality problems had irked too many customers, VW offered Fannin and thousands of other lease holders an early exit with no mileage penalties if they bought or leased another VW, something she was not planning to do.

"It was a good deal for me because of my mileage overrun, and saved me a lot," says Fannin, who now leases a VW GTI. Fannin, who put no money down on the GTI, has a monthly payment of $342. Had she bought the car with no money down, the monthly payment would have been $591 for a three-year loan at 1.9 percent interest or $370 for a five-year loan at 2.9 percent.

She got the lower monthly payment with no money down, but after three years, she won't have the car anymore. If she could have put 10 percent down on the new car, after six or seven years her annual cost of ownership would be far less than the lease.

And she has to watch her mileage again, something she vows to do. "It's going to be tough, but I don't want to be in that crunch again," she says.

"There are people who like the lower monthly payments that come with leasing," says Paul Ballew, head of sales analysis for GM. "And people who like the lifestyle of changing vehicles every three years without worrying about how much the trade-in is worth."

Enron repercussions may be slowing commercial leasing volume as firms scramble to restate earnings, which may be forestalling them from signing leases.

Leasing volume is already ebbing, so this wariness could be hindering landlords' efforts at leasing space.

Trinity Real Estate's director of commercial leasing Stephen Heyman believes that few large firms are willing to make commitments that they don't have to make at this time.

"No one knows where the fickle finger might point next, and there is no confidence in the immediate viability of firms," said Heyman during a recent panel discussion.

Given the cost of leasing Manhattan office space, the decision to sign a lease can only be made with adequate--and accurate--financial information. It's conceivable that a firm might sign a lease on the basis of faulty bookkeeping, and subsequently find themselves unable to pay the rent. Whether or not these firms are indeed credit-worthy may be a moot point: Their financial confidence has been undermined.

Or is it the other way around, as some in the industry believe that landlords are now forced to scrutinize would-be tenants? For landlords who suffered at the hands of failing dot-coms in 2001, caution may be the order of the day.Many landlords got slammed with these dot-coms. Now they have to worry about this, since some tenants may not even know that they can't afford a lease," said David Workman, executive managing director at Brown Harris Stevens' commercial services division.

Yet many landlords are anxious to rent their space, so haste may convince them to overlook these issues in favor of securing rent.

"Landlords really can't be that picky, can they? They may require bigger security deposits now, but I don't think that Enron is screening out viable tenants," said Ruth Colp-Haber, a broker from Wharton Properties.

Purchasing new packaging equipment can take a big chunk out of your capital budget. Like it or not, the modern state of packaging dictates that you keep up with technological advances in equipment. Frequent improvements in machinery reflect today's incessant product and packaging changes, as well as the persistent need to raise productivity and line speeds.

That doesn't mean you can't tweak old machinery to keep up--you can. But inevitable equipment obsolescence or breakdowns are somewhere on the horizon and eventually you'll have to buy a new machine. It's in the financing arena that battle lines are likely to be drawn--a conflict nearly Shakespearean in scope.

To lease or not to lease? That is the question (with apologies to Hamlet)--especially when it comes to procuring new packaging equipment. Maybe your company is large enough--profitable enough--to be able to afford buying a new piece of equipment outright.

But maybe you've overshot your capital budget allotment and can't spare the hard cash for a machine that you desperately need. Or maybe you're a start-up or a "mom-and-pop" operation and you need a new filler, bagger or cartoner to boost your packaging line but budget constraints simply make cutting a check out of the question.

According to Greg Williams, CEO of American Packaging Capital--a company that specializes in leasing packaging equipment and has recently been appointed the official equipment finance partner by the Packaging Machinery Manufacturers Institute (PMMI)--if there's a lot of capital available, buying equipment is probably the way to go. If you don't spend an allotted amount of capital during the course of a fiscal year, you won't get it next year.

Explains Williams, "The assumption is, if the company is growing, if the economy is doing well and there's money--you need to spend it because, if you don't, it'll go somewhere else. So the impetus is to buy that piece of packaging machinery now while there's a chance. Use it or lose it, in other words. Plus there are psychological reasons to obtaining a pink slip. Ownership sometimes factors in more so than equipment obsolescence."

When a business buys equipment, it capitalizes it on its balance sheet by showing the equipment as an asset. And the company must also include a corresponding liability to account for any loans used to finance the transaction. The cost of the capitalized equipment must be amortized over its economic life and depreciation expense will appear on the company's income statement. The depreciation and interest expenses represent the financial statement cost of purchasing and financing the equipment.

But packages change, technologies change and, therefore, equipment must change--sometimes before the depreciation period is up--which makes leasing an attractive alternative.

Leasing might also help stretch your budget dollars. By making "affordable" lease payments over a period of time, you [night be able to buy "more" packaging equipment, either in numbers (like two machines instead of one) or in sophistication (like ordering servos and the latest controls).

Types of leases

Leasing equipment has been gaining more ground in the packaging industry as end users become more familiar with how a lease works and what the benefits are. There are two programs available: the finance lease and the operating lease.

* The Finance Lease:

Commercial banks and equipment leasing companies are common dealers of the finance lease. Instead of a firm being saddled with raising the money for the acquisition of a capital item, the lessor purchases the item, permits its use by the lessee and is repaid by the lessee through monthly or annual rental fees. The lessee assumes service and maintenance costs plus keeps track of any related bookkeeping over the duration of the lease.

Unless the lessee has an option to buy, the leased item goes back to the lessor when the lease expires. Many leasing companies join with equipment manufacturers in setting up a joint venture subsidiary to buy equipment and lease to packaging machinery end users. The key to this type of lease is that it shifts the burden of capital accumulation from the lessee to the lessor.