One of the main reasons for what The Economist has dubbed the 2011 "starburst revival" is that "companies seeking buyers for parts of their business are not getting good offers from other firms, or from private equity" [REF].
According to The Economist, another driving force of the proliferation of spin-offs is what it calls the "conglomerate discount" - that "stockmarkets value a diversified group at less than the sum of its parts" [REF].