Gianluca Marcato
Professor of Finance and Real Estate
Head of Department, Real Estate and Planning
Director, Certificate in Government Property Leadership
Director, INREV / Henley Certificate in Non-Listed Real Estate Investment
Derivatives in Real Estate (Developments, M&A, Options, Swaps)
Investors’ Attitude and Market Structure in Assessing Multiple Equilibria for Real Option Pricing (with T. Gabrieli), Working Paper
The Dual Structure of Option Prices (with T. Sebehela)
Publications
Exchange Options in the REIT Industry (with T. Sebehela and H. Campani)
Advances in Investment Analysis and Portfolio Management, 2019
Abstract: This article models mergers as exchange options where acquirers offer stocks and/or cash to target firms in exchange of acquiring some shareholding in target firms. Mergers analysed in this article happen between homogeneous entities. The Black and Scholes (B–S) and Margrabe models are used to price cash and stocks (including stocks and cash) deals respectively. The merger and acquisition (M&A) traits are grouped as conflict of interest, market growth, funding and specialization. Regression results illustrate that exchange options react to M&A characteristics differently. Thus, the results are beneficial to both sell-and buy-side investors in terms on how one manages merging firms. The goodness of fit suggests that strategic acquisitions played important roles.
Volatility Smiles when Information Is Lagged in Prices (with T. Sebehela and H. Campani)
North American Journal of Economics and Finance, 2018
Abstract: This study explores volatility smiles when stock market information is lagged, specifically in the REIT industry. A usual requirement is that REITs can only disseminate information relating to their property valuations once per year; therefore, this leads to the lagging effect. Within the context of exchange options (i.e. mergers), it seems that no study has researched on this theme. This article uses the Black & Scholes model to calculate implied volatilities and their corresponding implied options to illustrate arbitrage opportunities when exchange options emerge. The results illustrate that implied volatilities are different from non-implied volatilities. Further, arbitrage is still higher among REITs as opposed to other capital market instruments. Finally, just like other capital market instruments, REIT acquisitions generate alpha.
Pricing Inefficiencies in Private Real Estate Markets Using Total Return Swaps (with C. Lizieri, P. Ogden and A. Baum)
Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, 2012
Abstract: This paper represents a first attempt to employ a macroeconomic approach to explain the high and varying IPO underpricing within a single emerging market. We examine the empirical impact of trade openness on the short-run underpricing of initial public offerings (IPOs) using city-level data. Particularly, we argue that urban economic openness (UEO) has a significant impact on the productivity and on prices of both direct and indirect real estate due to productivity gains of companies in more open areas. This in turn positively affects the firm’s profitability, enhancing the confidence in local real estate markets and future company performance, hence decreasing the uncertainty of the IPO valuation. As a result, issuers have less incentive to underprice IPO shares. We use a sample of Chinese real estate IPOs, which offer a suitable laboratory thanks to their strong geographic investment patterns focused locally and a country with a highly heterogeneous openness across regions. Controlling for traditional firm- and issuing-specific characteristics of IPOs that are used for developed markets and Chinese-related features (i.e. listing location and state ownership), we find the evidence that companies investing in economically more open areas experience less IPO underpricing. Our results show great explanatory power and are robust to different specifications.