Risk Capital for a Profitable Public Corporation: Public Dividend Capital or Equity?

The question of whether profitable public corporations should be converted to private, equity capital finance (i.e.'privatized', in current U.K. terminology) or not is arguably the dominant issue in the public sector of the U.K. economy. The present U.K. government has embarked upon a policy of privatization of state industries. This has attracted considerable criticism on the grounds that the government's actions are the product of ideological and short-term fiscal considerations (principally the funding of public expenditure) rather than of carefully considered policy (Heald and Steel, 1981; Heald, 1983, p. 154). This topic is examined in this paper. The discussion is neither partisan nor ideological. Instead, it centres on the technical and economic merits of equity capital versus its public sector proxy, Public Dividend Capital (PDC). This latter form of capital financing has been neglected in recent years, as the major thrust of the public sector debate has addressed the need for equity capital in the nationalized industries. Therefore, the ensuing discussion is not only a critique of the case for introducing private equity capital in state industries, but it is also an assessment of the case for the retention of PDC as a major instrument of finance.