Deals, Deals, Deals (and a Great Year for REITs)
Wall Street has managed to post some pretty impressive gains in 2006. But again, the market for real estate investment trusts has beaten most stocks, as large investors pumped reams of capital into companies with large holdings of commercial property and, in some cases, gobbled up entire portfolios in private deals.
REIT mergers and acquisitions, in fact, have reached record levels this year. Some 22 transactions with a total value of $102.8 billion (including the assumption of debt) have been announced according to the research company SNL Financial, compared with 11 deals valued at $28.8 billion for all of last year and a total of $92 billion in transactions for the last six years combined.