Could it be that the balance of power has shifted from the boardrooms to the shareholders they serve?

The evidence is clear from last week's close of the 2014 reporting season that dividends are king. Those companies that have rewarded investors with buybacks and bigger dividend payouts have had strongly performing share prices. Nothing wrong with that.

However, the flip side of this coin is that aggregate capital expenditure is declining at a greater rate than analysts have forecast – an outcome that leads one to wonder if there is too much emphasis on short-term popularity and not enough on medium- and longer-term growth.

Sure, some companies are returning money to their shareholders and financing their businesses by other means. For example, there is an increase in the amount of finance being obtained in the cheaper corporate bond market.

From a company's perspective, this makes sense because debt, today, is historically cheap and equity is not. However, even if we back out the funds raised in debt markets it is clear that this generosity towards shareholders is primarily being financed by companies spending less on investment.

The net result of this wave of buybacks (and the cancelling of dividend reinvestment programs) is that the number of equities in the Australian market is decreasing. Credit Suisse has called it the "de-equitising reporting season", in which companies are trying hard to keep their share numbers down.

As part of the same theme, companies are raising less equity. The count from the reporting season is $3.7 billion worth of buybacks and $1.5 billion worth of expected equity raisings that did not happen.

Credit Suisse goes so far as to use the headline 'Capex is a dirty word' in one of its reports.

Although we now have the numbers to support the fact that this trend is clear, the anecdotal evidence has been with us for months. It was sufficient for Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens to remark a few weeks ago that businesses needs a bit more "animal spirits" to push them into investment.

Stevens is not concerned about individual company's prospects but rather the aggregate impact on the economy because sluggish capital expenditure augurs badly for economic growth and employment.

Credit Suisse says: "Bottom-up capex estimates have come down by an average of 4 per cent over two years for reporting companies. Free cash-flow estimates have gone up by an average of 2 per cent. Improving cash flow is likely to fuel further de-equitisation."

All this gives a snapshot that looks good for current shareholders and for the sharemarket, but it does suggest at least a hint of corporate expediency. Indeed, if I had $1 for every chief executive who remarked over the years that the short-term share price was not a concern then ... well, you know the rest.

Of course, this statement is a nonsense. CEOs pay very close attention to their share price and are extremely concerned about fluctuations in it. Their short-term and long-term bonus incentive packages are priced relative to the value of stock, and their tenure depends on it.

What they really mean is that some corporate decisions (be they acquisitions, increased organic investment or dividend payments) are not always immediately popular but they are better for medium-term strategy.

Indeed, corporate bosses regularly, and rightly, bemoan the fact that investment markets have a very short-term horizon. This is why this current bout of conservatism feels like a cave-in to short-term interests.

For those that are assessing cheap debt markets and rationing equity, the concern does not apply, but it was all too clear in the reporting season just gone that there was a particular emphasis on rationing future capital expenditure and plenty of brownie points to be awarded for the tightest corporate wallets.

The large miners like BHP and Rio Tinto led the charge in cutting capex, but there were plenty of others; some because they needed to, but others that were just mindful of their shareholders' response.

So why are investors exerting so much pressure on companies to give them a dividend yield? Credit Suisse strategist Hasan Tevfik says the obvious answer is that the shareholders have become more income seeking, given falling returns from traditional fixed-income products as (perversely) central banks worldwide have lowered interest rates as they flood the market with liquidity.

Thus investors have been pushed into the equity market in search of a return and, in turn, have applied pressure on companies to provide it.

Shareholders are also making it pretty clear to companies that they are nor prepared to fund what they consider risky investments, whose returns are uncertain. They would rather have the money in their wallets as they head, increasingly, towards retirement.

The statistics from the latest reporting season clearly demonstrate that much of the earnings growth was the result of cost cutting, rather than revenue growth.