Book description
Selling the Family Silver
is, moreover, the controversial 'warts and all' story of Britain's
privatization programme, past and future. The chairmen, the cheats, the
fanfares and the flops - from all sides of the political, social and
economic coin, the author examines the contentious demise of
nationalization and the real effectiveness of the private giants that
have replaced it, finally posing the fundamental question: Has
privatization worked?
Colin Chapman, one of Britain's leading financial journalists,
presents a straightforward yet authorative explanation of the different
phases which turn a public sector enterprise into a fully-fledged
privatized plc: commercializatioin, 'corporatization' and the so-called
'fattening up' prior to flotation. There are special sections on price
fixing as well as on the role of privatization in Eastern Europe and the
Third World.
