The objective of this study is to trace the enterprise privatization process in Hungary and examine its impacts on corporate restructuring of ex-public firms. Following the large-scale privatization in the early stage of systemic transformation to a market economy, the Hungarian government was sufficiently well-disciplined to sell state-owned enterprises primarily to strategic investors. In the financial literature, the argument is made that transfer of strategic control rights enables new owners and company managers to materialize privatization gains effectively. Acquisition of newly privatized firms by foreign investors also has the potential to greatly improve a firm's performance. The case studies in this paper present supporting evidence of this view.
