Efficiency of French Privatizations:A Dynamic Vision

The program of French privatizations is one of the principal worldwide programs as for the volume of the equity issues. A reading of the process of privatization through the corporate governance theory resulted in working out a model making it possible to take into account, on the one hand, the time dimension of the process of privatization, on the other hand, the contextual, organizational, governance and strategic variables which influence this process. After having replicated a certain number of traditional tests, we carried out a test of this model on a sample of 19 French privatized firms and on a seven years horizon, which made it possible to obtain the following conclusions. The favorable incidence attributed traditionally to privatizations is not truly confirmed for French privatizations, at least on the horizon considered. Privatization induces a significant positive effect on the performance only for a low number of firms. The importance of the effect, however, is subordinated to some of the suggested variables.