Divestment

Divestment refers to the disposal of assets in any one of a variety of ways. For example, a new judge can divest herself of stock holdings that might generate a conflict of interest, or an individual investor might divest himself of computer stocks if he thinks they have a poor future. At the institutional level, divestment is a policy and set of economic sanctions used by corporations, groups of shareholders, individuals, and governments to put pressure on a company and/or a country, to protest either the company's or the country's policies and practices. It is a means of leveraging economic power to help bring about political, economic, legal, and/or social change in the target company or country. Divestment is a result of pressure from shareholders, ...