Why do Firms go private? Motivations, Performance and International Issues

This article deals with the motivations and the different sources of value from Public to Private Operations. These operations were still some years ago little known in French landscape. These tend to develop more and more even if some statutory obstacles always remain present and slow down their expansion. First of all we examine the recent evolution of these operations at the international level (the United States of America, Europe and Asia). These three geographic zones represent to them 82% of the world population of PtoP, it is almost quasi-totality of all the world

PtoP. Then we analyse the principal reasons of the development of Public to Private which is more and more important. To realize it, we identify all motivations. Certain motivations have a bigger dimension on the development of PtoP according to the statutory context of the country in which

develop these operations. What’s more we elaborate a synthesis of the main studies for each hypothesis: for it, we list the authors, the time period and the geographic area of the study. Finally, we realize a method in order to analyse the motivations and the performance of PtoP according to four approaches (characteristics of the firms before the transaction, the impact of an announcement of a PtoP to the shareholders wealth, the results of the firm after the transaction and finally the study of longevity of a PtoP).