Nomi writes: > Airlines do this all the time, too. They borrow > money to buy airplanes, 'sell' the airplanes to > a special purpose entity, which is owned by them, > and then lease the planes back from this special > purpose entity.
Michael writes: > I recall reading in a Nader report from the 70s that > CitiBank had the third largest airforce in the world > after the US and the USSR. Given the above, can we say that while some of the airlines, the ones that engage in transactions with special purpose entities, are after distorting market signals (am I polite or what?), others, the ones that publicly engage in transactions with financial institutions such as CitiBank or BofA, have other objectives? I expect these to types of transactions will look different on the balance sheet. Now, the reason why I ask this question is that I started to think about an empirical study on the influence of lease for long-term debt swaps on stock returns and possibly more. Since it is a very fresh idea, just got triggered by Chris' question, I cannot get more specific than that at this point. I would appreciate receiving information from the list members regarding earlier studies related to this topic as well as on data sources that may be useful in distinguishing the two types of lease for long-term debt swap deals as described above. I will not object to suggestions that would help me improve the above idea, either. My address is <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, in case you subscribe to the list in the no-mail/web-only mode. Best, Sabri
