In recent years, the European Union has discussed several possibilities concerning the unbundling of vertically integrated companies. Most of the scientific literature on this topic deals with unbundling from the perspective of social welfare or regulatory economics, but does not analyze the shareholder's perspective. This article deals with this component by means of a theoretical model, which is empirically tested afterwards. It shows that ownership unbundling leaves the investors better off if the company to be divested is a large transmission or distribution operator (revenues above Euro 100,000,000) whilst the opposite is true if the business to be divested is small.
