By Robin A. Friedman | The Wall Street Journal
One of the fastest-growing trends among big retail and restaurant chains in recent years has been a practice called sale/lease-backs, where retailers sell their stores, pocket the profits and then lease the stores back from the buyer.
The transactions allow companies to cash out the value of their real-estate holdings, which have risen sharply in recent years. But they can also saddle companies with large lease expenses that can become burdensome over time.
