[hellweaver666]

Do they actually "own" it? I work for a large company who spent millions building a new office and then immediately sold it to a different company so they could lease it instead of owning it (apparently this looks better on the books!)

[mrguyorama]

>apparently this looks better on the books!

Or, as we have seen hundreds of times, it's sold at market price to a "third party" company that is actually owned by one of the board members or executives, which then rent it back to the company for a slight premium.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

We do see this occasionally. You'll have some private equity group buy a restaurant chain like Red Lobster. They make RL lease the real estate from them after having RL sell the real estate to them. Sometimes it's not restaurants, I think this is what murdered Toys'R'Us (correct me on that if I'm wrong).

But this isn't the norm, and it's not happening to well-managed businesses. It's something a vulture does after the company has been struggling for years. If that happened with a Microsoft or an Amazon, or any of the companies we work for. It's silly to suggest that is the cause of widespread RTO mandates.

[blackeyeblitzar]

Amazon used to lease several buildings from Paul Allen for years but ended up buying them outright, and then going on a construction binge beyond that.