Asset stripping

Asset Stripping is the practice of buying a company in order to sell its assets individually at a profit.

Asset stripping is also sometimes used to describe the practice of investors dealing directly with armed militant groups in developing nations to take direct control of assets that legally belong to the state or commons or any group in society that the investor and armed militant can effectively coerce. It has led to deforestation in Africa and Colombia and to other harmful effects.

Jim Friedman on a United Nations panel on exploitation of natural resources in the Democratic Republic of Congo, listed this as one of several key concerns in "Investment and human rights ".