This paper studies the role of shareholder activism on corporate leases. We find that the presence of shareholder activists is associated with large increases in leasing. This association is stronger in periods of high real estate prices and for firms with larger amounts of real estate assets....

Theoretically and empirically, debt and leases have been shown to be both substitutes and complements. To explore the relation, we divide our sample into two subsets: those that exhibit a complementary relation (43% increase debt after increasing leases), and those that exhibit a substitutionary...