Key determinants of the debt decisions of equity REITs

: an exploratory analysis of Asia Pacific REITs debt structures with a focus on sponsors, external management, and the impact of financial crisis: evidence from Japan, Singapore, and Australia

Abstract

This thesis explores capital structure decision making in the Asian-Pacific Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs). In particular, I focus on two distinctive features of these REITs, the presence of sponsor and external management, and how they affect the leverage and debt maturity decisions. Utilizing data from Australia, Japan and Singapore over the sample period of 2005-2011, empirical results indicate sponsored REITs opt for higher levels of leverage and loans with longer maturity. On the contrary, externally managed REITs are associated with lower leverage and they can only pursue loans of shorter maturity. Results are robust to the inclusion of other variables and to alternative specification which model leverage and debt maturity as joint simultaneous decisions. I also find that subsequent to the financial crisis, the impact of sponsor on debt financing decisions has diminished, while borrowing of externally managed REITs is substantially constrained.

Date of Award	16 Feb 2015
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	City University of Hong Kong
Supervisor	Ka Yui Charles LEUNG (Supervisor)