In response to the recent financial crisis, the U.S. Government introduced new rules which allow REITs to issue elective stock dividends (ESD) to satisfy their distribution requirements. The goal of these rules was to provide temporary relief to REITs facing cash flow problems. We investigate...

In response to the recent financial crisis, the U.S. Government introduced new rules which allow REITs to issue elective stock dividends, i.e., non-cash dividends, to satisfy their distribution requirements. The purported goal of these rules was to provide temporary relief to REITs facing cash...

In general, investment grade bonds do not offer covenant protection. However, in the case of Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), investment grade REITs tend to include a covenant package that outlines limits on leverage and requires maintaining certain fixed charges and interest coverage...

This paper examines the impact of debt covenants on the speed of capital structure adjustment. Overall, we find that covenants lower the speed of adjustment by 10–13%, relative to the speed of adjustment of firms without covenants. The speed of adjustment is significantly lower, by 40–50%,...