European Vs. US Multinationals. A Comparison of Corporate Real Estate Holdings

This paper compares the corporate real estate holdings of European and US multinational corporations. The authors initially develop several benchmarks based on accounting and balance sheet information, and then test for significant differences by industries and sectors between European and US firms. We select firms meeting criteria on multinationalism, total assets, and market capitalization from our database of 1,600 US firms and 2,200 European firms. A priori, we believe European firms have higher percentages of property, plant, and equipment to total assets than US firms. Our conclusion postulates a variety of explanations of the corporate real estate asset differences based on our findings.