The equipment leasing industry has never faced a muckraker quite like Rhonda Roland Shearer.

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Asset-backed securities have worked fine with financing things like auto loans and equipment leasing, notes New York securities lawyer Chris DiAngelo.

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The Equipment Leasing Association, whose members include Bank of New York and AmSouth Bancorp , notes that such deals account for 10% of all leasing deals.

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Although the industry's top trade group, the Equipment Leasing Association, doesn't endorse Shearer's report, it distributed her bombshell to all 280 executives attending its annual meeting for investors in New York last month.

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Oil and gas, equipment leasing.

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So far 25 companies have used its services to get better equipment-leasing rates.

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Kevin Lease, a 47-year-old owner of a Seattle equipment-leasing company, turned to a personal researcher when he began researching his Italian roots with just one name to go on.

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He focused on areas that had been deregulated, leasing equipment and selling long-distance telephone services.

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For commercial loans, companies that are not bank eligible often turn to asset-backed lenders, pledging inventories and accounts receivable or leasing equipment rather than purchasing it.

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By choosing to lease data centers and simply buy equipment, Rackspace has lessened its capital exposure while itself benefitting from a leasing model.

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