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We provide evidence on the information content of the method of payment in mergers by examining shareholder returns in a sample of REIT mergers over the period [1994][1995][1996][1997][1998]. When the target firm is publicly held, we find that transactions are always stock-financed, and that acquiring firm shareholders sustain small negative returns around the announcement date. When the target is privately held, cash financing, mixed (stock and cash) financing, and placement of blocks of acquirer stock with target owners are more prevalent. Acquirer returns are positive in stock-financed mergers when the target is private, which is consistent with both the information signaling and monitoring by blockholders hypotheses. Further analysis supports the information signaling hypothesis as the dominant explanation. The effects of other explanatory variables are similar whether the target is public or private. Most significantly, acquiring shareholder returns are negatively related to the acquirer's size, but positively related to the acquirer's use of the UPREIT organizational structure. The positive wealth effects of the UPREIT structure are not fully explained as the capitalization of tax benefits.A persistent pattern in the literature on mergers is that shareholders of bidder firms experience significant valuation loss at the announcement of stockfinanced transactions, while announcements of cash purchases cause no significant change in value at all. This finding is generally attributed to the information asymmetry hypothesis, which posits that choice of stock as payment method reflects managers' perception that the stock is overvalued.In a recent paper, Chang (1998) demonstrates that the effect of stock financing is reversed when the target is privately held. For private targets, stock financing is associated with significantly positive shareholder returns for the acquiring firm. Chang argues that this value enhancement may be caused by monitoring benefits * 362 Campbell, Ghosh and Sirmans provided by new blockholders of more than 5% of the acquirer's stock, which are often formed in public-private mergers. However, a potential problem is that the formation of blockholders may also proxy for a greater use of stock financing. Owners of private targets are expected to be better informed about the prospects of the acquiring firm; therefore, their willingness to hold the acquirer's stock may constitute a positive signal to the market.In this study, we use a data set of Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) mergers in an attempt to distinguish between the signaling effects of stock financing and the monitoring effects of blockholder formation. The unique institutional environment in which REITs operate provides the motivation for our use of REITs to analyze method-of-payment effects in mergers. REITs normally do not pay federal income taxes. However, to maintain their favored tax status, REITs must pay out 95% of net "taxable" earnings each year, thus limiting their capacity to generate internal funds to finance large i...

Genetic control of plant regeneration from cultured plant tissues has been documented for a number of species. The characterization and manipulation of loci that influence morphogenic responses may be useful for the development of highly regenerable germplasm or for physiological investigations. Quantitative trait loci (QTLs) for morphogenesis from barley cell cultures were identified on the basis of associations of mapped markers with the regeneration responses of 77 doubled haploid (DH) lines derived from the cross Steptoe/Morex. Two models were developed, one describing green plant regeneration, and one describing albino plant regeneration, measured as the numbers of green and albino plants regenerated per gram fresh weight of embryogenic callus. Approximately 62 and 12% of the observed variability for green and albino plant regeneration, respectively, was explained by the models. An independent data set was developed that consisted of the regeneration responses of 25 additional DH lines which were chosen randomly from the same segregating population. The models were tested for their ability to predict the responses of these independent DH lines. This study identified new QTLs for plant regeneration (one for green plants and at least one for albino plants), and confirmed previously reported associations of three QTLs with green plant regeneration.

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Corporate governance, Mergers, Corporate control, Real Estate Investment Trusts,