This book sets out to demystify the privatisation process -- currently transforming the economies of the world -- by reviewing both the business organization and capital raising aspects of the process as experienced in France, Italy, UK, Canada, Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil and Mexico, particularly in the light of the latest important developments in those countries. This work does not claim to be exhaustive. It offers a focus on the status reached on the edge of 1994 as understood by those heavily engaged in the process, with a grasp of the large canvas of considerations and objectives that play upon such transactions. This handbook emerges from the distilled expertise of two committees of the IBA's Section on Business Law, who met and discussed the matter in October 1993, New Orleans. The sure prediction made is that privatisations will continue to constitute a major form of business transaction and to involve a significant percentage of the world's capital raising requirements. This handbook informs all those who need to know where we are, and where things are going.