Corporations were under enormous pressure from financial markets to disinvest to redeploy capital out of the corporate sector. The reason was that return on capital had fallen to historic postwar lows in the 1980s. What happened was the return on capital began bottoming out around 1979 or 82, depending on how you measure it. Interest rates shot way up to get inflation under control but then continued at a high rate even after inflation fell. With real interest rates at an all time high, return on equity was really quite low.
Financial markets put enormous pressure on corporations to disinvest low profit centers.
But disinvestment ran counter to all the cultural training of corporate executives. So the cost to capital wasn't accounted for and the 1980s really drove that home. Almost anything would make more than you could get in the bond market. If you were growing and expanding, you were likely to be making money relative to the cost of capital. Not true in the 80s.