Applicering av obligationsfinansiering i börsnoterade fastighetsbolag - En kvalitativ studie av säkerställda obligationer

Abstract

New rules for bank capital adequacy were introduced in 2013. This caused a change in funding of real estate companies. The bank could not cover as much of the companies funding’s as before and they had to explore other funding opportunities, such as bonds. Bond funding in Swedish real estate companies regularly consists of unsecured corporate bonds and the secured ones are not that common. In order to cover the gap created by the bank funded parts of the companies’ capital; issuances of secured corporate bonds have to increase. Drawing from the aforementioned, this study has investigated the underlying reasons to why the secured bonds not are issued to a greater extent. The intent of the study is to increase the knowledge of how real estate companies consider whether to use unsecured or secured bonds. Further, the study is based on a deductive approach where existing theory is compared to the collected empirical facts, this to reach a conclusion. A qualitative approach has been used to create a detailed and narrow perspective of the problem formulation. Previous research has been conducted within the field of study but can only be related to the actual pricing of covered bonds, while this study presents the underlying reasons to why the attention for the product is low. Delimitations have been made to center the study around listed real estate companies with partly bond funding structures. The theoretical framework describes the theories applied to analyze the empirical facts. Our empirical evidence shows that real estate companies opt for unsecured over secured bonds. The Swedish corporate bond market is not considered to be sufficiently developed due to the great tradition of bank funding. The respondents indicate that it is considered difficult to issue a secured bond, which inhibits growth. Moreover, they clarify that the price disparity between the two options is too slight for real estate companies to include an underlying collateral in the bond. Finally, today bank funding is too good competitively priced and this is perceived as the main reason as to why the issuing of secured bonds is so low, which also is our conclusion.