IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jindec/v50y2002i2p173-96.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Impact of Divestment on Firm Performance: Empirical Evidence from a Panel of UK Companies

Author

Listed:
  • Haynes, Michelle
  • Thompson, Steve
  • Wright, Mike

Abstract

It has widely been suggested that during the 1980s many diversified firms narrowed the scope of their activities by refocusing on core businesses, primarily through divestment activity. This study examines the impact of divestment on firm performance, using an unbalanced panel of 132 UK quoted companies over the period 1985 to 1993. The results suggest that divestment has a positive, significant and substantial effect in raising the profitability of the vendor company. We find limited support for the view that the benefit from divestment is greater for larger and/or more diversified firms and firms operating with weak governance arrangements. Copyright 2002 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Suggested Citation

  • Haynes, Michelle & Thompson, Steve & Wright, Mike, 2002. "The Impact of Divestment on Firm Performance: Empirical Evidence from a Panel of UK Companies," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(2), pages 173-196, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jindec:v:50:y:2002:i:2:p:173-96
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Angélica María Sánchez-Riofrío & Luis Ángel Guerras-Martín & Francisco Javier Forcadell, 2015. "Business portfolio restructuring: a comprehensive bibliometric review," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 102(3), pages 1921-1950, March.
    2. Forcadell, Francisco Javier & Sanchez-Riofrio, Angelica & Guerras-Martín, Luis Ángel & Romero-Jordán, Desiderio, 2020. "Is the restructuring-performance relationship moderated by the economic cycle and the institutional environment for corporate governance?," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 397-407.
    3. Michelle Haynes & Steve Thompson & Mike Wright, 2007. "Executive Remuneration and Corporate Divestment: Motivating Managers to Make Unpalatable Decisions," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(5‐6), pages 792-818, June.
    4. Brown, T. & Panibratov, A., 2016. "Foreign divestment decisions: A theoretical framework," Working Papers 6450, Graduate School of Management, St. Petersburg State University.
    5. Panos Desyllas, 2009. "Improving performance through vertical disintegration: evidence from UK manufacturing firms," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(5), pages 307-324.
    6. Meijui Sun, 2012. "Impact Of Divestiture Activities On Corporate Performance: Evidence From Listed Firms In Taiwan," The International Journal of Business and Finance Research, The Institute for Business and Finance Research, vol. 6(2), pages 59-67.
    7. Steve Thompson & Mike Wright, 2005. "Edith Penrose's contribution to economics and strategy: an overview," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(2), pages 57-66.
    8. Alex Mohr & Georgios Batsakis & Zita Stone, 2018. "Explaining the effect of rapid internationalization on horizontal foreign divestment in the retail sector: An extended Penrosean perspective," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 49(7), pages 779-808, September.
    9. Elena Vidal & Will Mitchell, 2015. "Adding by Subtracting: The Relationship Between Performance Feedback and Resource Reconfiguration Through Divestitures," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 26(4), pages 1101-1118, August.
    10. Haynes, Michelle & Thompson, Steve & Wright, Mike, 2003. "The determinants of corporate divestment: evidence from a panel of UK firms," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 52(1), pages 147-166, September.
    11. Fang, Yinhai & Xu, Haiyan & Perc, Matjaž & Tan, Qingmei, 2019. "Dynamic evolution of economic networks under the influence of mergers and divestitures," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 524(C), pages 89-99.
    12. Owen, Sian & Yawson, Alfred, 2006. "Domestic or international: Divestitures in Australian multinational corporations," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 17(2), pages 282-293, December.
    13. Humphery-Jenner, M., 2011. "Diversification in Private Equity Funds : On Knowledge-sharing, Risk-aversion and Limited-attention," Discussion Paper 2011-046, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    14. Humphery-Jenner, M., 2011. "Diversification in Private Equity Funds : On Knowledge-sharing, Risk-aversion and Limited-attention," Other publications TiSEM 3e22d8a9-6846-484f-a09e-7, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    15. Manapol Ekkayokkaya & Phil Holmes & Krishna Paudyal, 2009. "Limited Information and the Sustainability of Unlisted‐Target Acquirers' Returns," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(9‐10), pages 1201-1227, November.
    16. Marwan Mohamed Abdeldayem & Saeed Hameed AL Dulaimi, 2019. "Privatisation as a Worldwide Tool of Economic Reform: A Literature Review," International Journal of Social and Administrative Sciences, Asian Economic and Social Society, vol. 4(2), pages 66-84, June.
    17. Pramodita Sharma & S. Manikutty, 2005. "Strategic Divestments in Family Firms: Role of Family Structure and Community Culture," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 29(3), pages 293-311, May.
    18. Coudounaris, Dafnis N. & Orero-Blat, María & Rodríguez-García, María, 2020. "Three decades of subsidiary exits: Parent firm financial performance and moderators," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 408-422.
    19. Erl, Ludwig & Kiesel, Florian & Koenigsmarck, Markus & Schiereck, Dirk, 2023. "Performance effects of sell-offs and the role of sell-off experience," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 244-257.
    20. Tokbolat, Yerzhan & Le, Hang & Thompson, Steve, 2021. "Corporate diversification, refocusing and shareholder voting," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    21. Valkama, Petri & Maula, Markku & Nikoskelainen, Erkki & Wright, Mike, 2013. "Drivers of holding period firm-level returns in private equity-backed buyouts," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(7), pages 2378-2391.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jindec:v:50:y:2002:i:2:p:173-96. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley-Blackwell Digital Licensing or Christopher F. Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0022-1821 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.