The phenomenon of withdrawing quoted companies from public trading at the motion of issuer is associated first and foremost with developed financial markets. In Poland it was accompanied by negative emotions; especially in the case of motion put by overseas strategic investors. These emotions resulted from the belief that during those processes the strategic investors acted to the detriment of minority shareholders.

In this connection we decided to establish in this paper if the phenomenon of withdrawing companies from the public trading creates a value for the minority shareholders in Poland, as it does in stock markets in highly developed countries. Empirical research data in this field, accessible until now, are limited to presentation of results from the US market and Western European countries. Therefore, bringing up the experience of the young Polish capital market, the paper broadens the area covered by professional literature .

In order to achieve the outlined research goal the analysis of prices of quoted companies, which had been withdrawn from public trading in 1998-2000, was conducted by means of event analysis. The research was limited to the analysis of short-term benefits for the minority shareholders as this group has a significant impact on long-term development of the capital market.

The research results regarding the Polish market, presented in the paper, are similar to the ones presented in the professional literature. More than average yield rates observed in the processes of withdrawing quoted companies are, however, lower than in the highly developed markets. This means that in the course of withdrawing quoted companies the value for minority shareholders is created. Thus, it should be assumed that from the point of view of minority shareholders there are no reasons to assess negatively those transactions.