We examine the over-investment motivation for share repurchases using a sample of 139 Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) between 1996 and 2010. By combining a REIT's property portfolio data with project ROAs from the underlying real estate market, we are able to create a unique measure of the firm's investment opportunity set. Controlling for other possible buyback rationales, we find that poor investment opportunities are related to higher levels of share repurchases. Conditioning on investment opportunities, we find that the level of cash is positively related to repurchases only for low investment opportunity set firms. We also find a negative relationship between share repurchase announcement returns and investment opportunities.

This study analyzes the reactions of equity holders and bondholders to the announcement of 427 preferred stock issues. We document an average equity announcement effect of −0.65%. This reaction is positively influenced by a number of measures of firm creditworthiness and transparency and is higher for bank issuers. The equity market reaction is negatively influenced by convertibility (and the moneyness of the embedded option) and by the firm's accounting treatment of the issue (specifically if the issue is classified as equity). We find that average credit default swap spreads decrease by 50 basis points after the issue announcement. This decrease is also larger for more creditworthy and transparent firms. Convertibility and the moneyness of the embedded option further decrease the CDS spread. In aggregate, the decrease in equity value is much smaller than the increase in the value of the issuer's debt.