Why do companies issue restricted stock?

When using restricted stock studies, you need to ask this question.   It can influence the discount, points out Jay Fishman.  Discounts are smaller if redemption is likely to be soon, of course, but the transactions that supposedly "arms length" may, in fact, turn out to have some sort of insider or warrant or other component that will affect their objective credibility.  For that reason, Fishman argues that you really need to see the underlying data for restricted-stock derived DLOMs (or, he points out, for pre-IPO and other methods for deriving DLOM).