Abstract: | This paper provides evidence that an equity carve-out is usually the first stage of a two-stage process either to dispose of parent interest in a subsidiary or eventually re-acquire the subsidiary's publicly traded snares. Both the initial carve-out announcement and subsequent sell-off announcement yield, on average, significantly positive abnormal returns to parent shareholders. In contrast, the parent's price response to a re-acquisition of subsidiary shares is, on average, insignificantly positive. Both sell-off and re-acquisition announcements have a strong positive impact on subsidiary share prices. These gains, however, are offset by the subsidiaries' below-average return performance preceding the second event. |