It does not directly answer your question, but an illustrative example is DuPont's spinoff of Chemours in 2015. Chemours was loaded with "assets" like dangero

It does not directly answer your question, but an illustrative example is DuPont's spinoff of Chemours in 2015. Chemours was loaded with "assets" like dangerous chemicals, and their accompanying lawsuits. (One phrase used in a later lawsuit was: "unlimited exposure for historical DuPont liabilities") Chemours' market cap was initially valued at $3b and quickly crashed to $0.75b. But then Trump was elected, it started looking like the liability from dangerous chemicals would be less than previously believed, and eventually this company, which was designed to fail because of open-ended liabilities, was valued as high as $10b. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/CC/chemours/market-cap https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/CC/chemours/market...