We argue that management sells assets when doing so provides the cheapest funds to pursue its objectives rather than for operating efficiency reasons alone. This hypothesis suggests that (1) firms selling assets have high leverage and/or poor performance, (2) a successful asset sale is good news...

We argue that management sells assets when doing so provides the cheapest funds to pursue its objectives rather than for operating efficiency reasons alone. This hypothesis suggests that (1) firms selling assets have high leverage and/or poor performance, (2) a successful asset sale is good news...

Previous studies show that profitability does not improve after share issue privatization (SIP) in China. We explore the possibility that the positive privatization effect can be overwhelmed by a negative listing effect, leading to an overall negative or insignificant SIP profitability change....