Corporate Finance.

Corporate Finance.
Growing interest among life insurance companies was noted during the year in a comparatively new method of corporate finance, which was the sale and lease-back of real estate. Although corporations adopting such financing have welcomed the device as a means of securing additional capital, the insurance companies have likewise promoted the plan in that it has opened a new field of investment for their growing investment assets. With the approval of, and in many states at the insistence of the life insurance companies, the legislatures of practically all the states have now enacted legislation permitting the life companies to make direct investments in real estate or interests in the real estate acquired for the purpose of producing income — often referred to as 'income real estate.' The legislatures long had provided for investment by life companies in real estate to a limited extent, namely in home-office properties and foreclosed real estate and housing. The expansion of this power to include investment in real estate was merely an extension of the field within which the inherent investment power of a life company could be exercised.