What a year 2009 was for privatization worldwide! One year after witnessing massive injections of government capital into financial systems, 2009 saw a record volume of state sales of corporate equity — or, stated more accurately, a record volume of corporate repurchases of government-owned shares. Privatization proceeds totaled a record €184.30 billion ($265.17 billion) during 2009, but bank repurchases of government holdings of preferred shares accounted for €118.46 billion ($168.8 billion) of this record — or almost two-thirds of the total. Besides the bank share repurchases, the global value of "classic" privatization deals during 2009 totaled only €65.84 billion ($96.29 billion), the lowest such tally since 2004. The year 2009 was, far more than is usually the case, a tale of two very dissimilar halves. The value of all privatizations worldwide during 1H2009 totaled about €67 billion ($95 billion) — including the €48.2 billion ($68.0 billion) U.S. bank repurchases of TARP capital — while the €117 billion ($171 billion) second half total was nearly twice as large.