I was speaking at a conference once on corporate reorganizations, and after the speech, an investor came up to me and explained that he never really looked at these sorts of company events as investable situations, but that he remembered gaining shares of Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. (CMG) through owning McDonald's (MCD) back in 2006. He was chuffed when the price of the initial public offering doubled to $44 from $22 on the first day of trading. Incidentally, the investor I was speaking to sold them on the day and has been kicking himself since. His primary fault was not knowing too much about the transaction and merely reacting to the prompt from his broker. It's better to be lucky than good, of course, but he could have been much luckier.