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A de-merger occurs when a company spins off a business it owns into a completely separate company. This result is often achieved through an issue of shares in the de-merged entity to the shareholders of the original group (in proportion to their shareholdings). ^[28] The rationale for a de-merger may be that it permits each of the businesses to focus on their core activities or that the market capitalisations of the separate companies will become more than the market capitalisation of the original group, thus increasing shareholder value. To put it another way, it becomes clear that the original group is less than the sum of its parts.

For companies that are active in more than one kind of business, de-merger rumours can be a staple of comment by analysts and the financial press. This has been the case with Pearson, for example, which has divested itself of Royal Doulton, Madame Tussauds and its stake in Lazard Brothers and whose Financial Times subsidiary is a perennial favourite of de-merger speculation.