The Special Fund for Infrastructure and Climate Neutrality (SFICN) sparked a debate over whether the funds would replace existing regular investments by the German government. Based on transcripts from earnings calls, researchers at the Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE have now analyzed, how the C-level of publicly listed companies in Germany view the SFICN.
Their analysis shows that executives expressed increasingly positive views on the SFICN during earnings calls as more concrete spending plans for the SFICN were included in the 2026 federal budget.
Corporate perspective on the Special Fund: Insights from earnings conferences
The decision on the SFICN surprised companies, as they had not anticipated a debt-financed investment program before the 2025 federal election. “The Special Fund very quickly became a relevant topic at earnings conference calls since March 2025,” says Alexander Hillert, a SAFE professor and one of the study’s authors.
Initially, executives expressed a rather neutral view of the fund, as the exact structure and implementation were not yet clear. “With the concrete spending plans in the 2026 federal budget, managers became more positive in their statements regarding the Special Fund,” Hillert notes. Companies in the financial, industrial, and basic materials sectors, in particular, expect the fund to stimulate growth and investment. Manufacturers of cyclical consumer goods are more cautious in their assessments.
Figure 1 shows how positively managers speak about the SVIK
Hillert emphasizes: “In this regard, the assessment of the Special Fund by managers of listed companies in Germany differs from the public debate in two respects. First, executives stress that the effects will not be seen until the medium- or long-term. Second, executives continue to view the impact as positive.”
Figure 2 shows how often managers mention the Special Fund
For their analysis, the researchers systematically evaluated more than 1,200 earnings calls held between January 2024 and March 2026 using text analysis methods. Hillert and his team collect the data monthly for the SAFE Index of Manager Sentiment.
The complete study is published as SAFE Policy Letter No. 115: The Corporate Perspective on the German Fiscal Stimulus Package. The analysis was published first in the ifo Schnelldienst in May 2026 (in German).
