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The present study aims to examine the short-term effect of disinvestment oriented IPOs and FPOs on the stock market performance of Indian central public sector enterprises (CPSEs), which divested their equity between 2000 and 2017.

The analysis of stock price reaction is conducted for listing dates only in the case of IPOs and three different dates in the case of FPOs through the event study methodology. The three-event dates related to FPOs are public notification date (PND), issue announcement date (IAD) and price band date (PBD).

Overall empirical analysis indicates that investor sentiments are generally insignificant prior to and posts the PND (first date). The second major date of announcement that is (IAD) is new information in the market and returns are found to be significantly negative across both the periods that is before and after IAD. Thus, the analysis depicts strongly negative investor sentiments in the case of IAD. These results are further substantiated by negatively significant CAR (cumulative abnormal returns) values for both the pre and post-event windows of PBD as well.

Empirical analysis concludes that investors do not stand a chance to gain abnormal returns through initiating positions in the stocks of CPSEs during the alternative event dates analyzed.

Since the year 2000, disinvestment through public offering has gathered momentum, and this mode accounts for approximately 62% of the collective disinvestment funds generated by the government of India till now. But there have been very limited research studies on the market performance of disinvested CPSEs. This analysis provides new empirical evidence for the market reactions of retail investors in response to the sale of equity by the Indian government in CPSEs.

The purpose of this study is to represent an attempt to empirically capture the impact of disinvestment on the financial and operating performance of 26 Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) listed central public sector enterprises (CPSEs) in India which got divested through stock market mechanism during the time period of 2000–2014.

Through ratio analysis different ratios such as return on assets, return on equity, net income efficiency, debt equity, dividend payout and employment levels have been computed. Pre- and post disinvestment performance of these firms is examined through Wilcoxon signed-rank test. The present research endeavors to examine the impact of disinvestment through random effect panel data models in order to control the effect of other firm specific variables.

The overall results of the study indicate statistically significant fall in profitability ratios. The empirical results have not witnessed positive effect of disinvestment on the profitability of the CPSEs; rather, this effect has found to be negative. The possible reasons behind these negative results could be poor pre disinvestment financial health of CPSEs, negative rate of return on capital employed by PSEs and inefficiency which need to be tested empirically by future researchers.

The fact that government-owned firms are typically less proficient or at least less gainful than private-owned firms is widely hypothesized. Therefore, the disinvestment policy aims at dropping the participation of the public sector in the economic actions of the country in order to support the private sector. The present study is a first of its kind to study the impact of disinvestment on the profitability of the firms, which got divested through stock market mechanism since the year 2000 by applying both univariate and multivariate analysis.