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Asset stripping is a method in which a company or an individual, known as a corporate raider, attains control of another company, and then auctions off the acquired company's assets. The sold assets are often used to repay the debt of the corporate raider, which may have been increased due to the acquisition. The process of asset stripping is utilised by corporate raiders in order to repay the debts they may have, whilst increasing their net worth. A company that may become susceptible to asset stripping is a company whose individual assets are worth more than its collective net worth. The term is generally used in a pejorative sense as such activity is not considered productive to the economy. Asset stripping is considered to be a problem in economies such as Russia or China that are making a transition to the market. In these situations, managers of a state-owned company have been known to sell the assets which they control, leaving behind nothing but debts to the state. ==History== The innovators of asset stripping were Carl Icahn, Victor Posner, and Nelson Peltz; all of whom were investors in the 70’s and 80’s. Carl Icahn performed one of the most notorious and hostile takeovers when he acquired Trans World Airlines in 1985. Here Icahn stripped TWA of its assets, selling them individually to repay the debt assimilated during the takeover. This particular corporate raid formed the idea of selling a company’s assets in order to repay debt, and eventually increase the raider’s net worth. One of the biggest corporate raids that failed to materialize was the takeover of Gulf Oil by T. Boone Pickens. In 1984, Pickens attempted to acquire Gulf Oil and sell its assets individually in order to gain net worth. However, the purchase would have had been severely detrimental to Chevron; a customer of Gulf Oil. Therefore, Chevron stepped in and merged with Gulf Oil for $13.2 billion, which at that time was the biggest merger between two companies in history. In 2011, BC Partners acquired Phones 4u for a fee in the region of £700 million. At this point in time Phones 4u had already entered administration and had deep financial struggles. However, this did not prevent BC Partners from taking a £223 million dividend in order to pay off some of its own debts. Under the ownership of BC Partners, Phones 4u had very little financial freedom to expand and claim back the contract of EE. In September 2014 O2, Vodafone and Three decided to withdraw the rights for Phones 4u to sell their products. Due to the already poor financial situation of Phones 4u, the company has now no alternative but to sell its individual assets and close down. The net worth of Phones 4u’s assets are estimated to exceed £1.4 billion, which provides BC Partners with the credit to pay off some of its debts and significantly improve its net worth. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Asset stripping」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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