Divestment and exit screen
The bank buys and never sells — this is the other half. Would we buy this today, at this price, knowing what we now know?
The printable canvas and the handoff into Claude Code are part of a paid plan. See what a plan includes. It needs the Claude desktop app on this machine, and your team and the prompt library already installed in that project — we cannot see your disk, so open it there.
What it is
A test applied to a business unit or asset whose fit with the rest of the portfolio is in doubt, built on one deliberately uncomfortable question: knowing what you know now, would you buy this today, at this price. Most portfolios hold at least one thing that would fail that test and nobody has asked it directly.
- The buy-it-today test
- Set aside sunk cost and history entirely. If this unit did not exist in the portfolio and came up for sale tomorrow, would you buy it at a price reflecting its current performance.
- Opportunity cost of keeping it
- What the capital, management attention and balance sheet capacity it absorbs could do elsewhere. Keeping an underperformer is rarely free even when it is not losing money.
- The exit route
- Sale to a strategic or financial buyer, a carve-out that separates it cleanly, or an orderly wind-down. Each has a different timeline, cost and reputational profile, and the wrong route destroys value the analysis correctly identified.
- Stranded cost
- What cost remains in the rest of the business after the unit leaves — shared services, property, overhead — that will not disappear just because the unit did.
- Buyer perspective
- Why a plausible buyer would want this asset and what it would be worth to them specifically, which is often different from what it is worth inside the current portfolio.
How you run it
- Ask the buy-it-today question directly, in the roomNot as a rhetorical opener — as the actual test. Set sunk cost and history aside and force a real answer.
- Price the opportunity cost of keeping itWhat the capital and management attention it absorbs could do elsewhere in the portfolio, stated as a number where possible.
- Identify the plausible buyer and what it is worth to themAn asset's value to a buyer with genuine synergy is often different from its value sitting inside a portfolio it does not fit.
- Choose the exit route deliberatelySale, carve-out or wind-down each have a different timeline, cost and reputational profile. The wrong route can destroy the value the analysis just found.
- Price the stranded cost of leavingWhat overhead, shared services or property remain after the unit exits and will not disappear with it. This is the number the board asks about second.
The prompt
Run this tool in your own Claude
The short prompt starts your partner against the library on your disk. The long one carries everything with it and needs nothing installed.
Your playbook
It lands in the earliest stage this tool suits. Move it on the Playbook page.
You’ll need
- The unit's actual financial and strategic contribution, not its history
- What the centre would do with the capital and management time it currently absorbs
- A candid view of what buying it today, cold, would actually cost
You’ll end up with
- A clear answer to the buy-it-today test, argued rather than assumed
- The exit route that fits — sale, carve-out or wind-down — and why
- The stranded cost of leaving, priced