Call it “Britain and (especially) China lead the world in a new privatization wave”. The 42-month period between January 2012 and August 2015 saw governments around the world raise over $812 billion (€644 billion) through privatizations, dwarfing the total for any comparable previous period, and the global value of privatizations for the first eight months of 2015, $213.4 billion (€188.2 billion), implies that the full-year 2015 total will be by far the highest on record—perhaps exceeding $300 billion for the first time ever. China was, by far, the leading privatizing country during both 2014 and 2015, raising $73.6 billion (€55.7 billion) during 2014, and an astonishing $133.3 billion (€123.0 billion) through August 2015—mostly during the raging bull market that peaked in May 2015. The United Kingdom was a distant second-leading privatizing country both during 2014 [$17.2 billion (€13.0 billion)] and during January-August 2015 [$14.6 billion (€12.2 billion)].
This Report describes global privatizations during 2014 and the first eight months of 2015, with emphasis on those in the European Union; it also presents four articles contributed by outside experts that highlight specific national and industrial programs.