Institutional Monitoring, Motivated Investors, and Firm Performance

We examine the impact of institutional investors on REIT performance. The mere presence of institutional investors does not positively affect firm operations and value. However, the presence of motivated institutional investors does. The results show that firms with shares held by motivated institutional investors have higher future values, improved future funds from operations, retention of these funds, better cash management, reduced regression to the mean following superior performance, and fewer agency problems. The results also suggest that existing measures of institutional monitoring used in the literature may not fully capture effects related to institutional investment.