In each case, the shares have been repurchased for more than their current price.Other companies may do the same thing and merely label it differently, says Mr Gabele.
The bank conducts much of its business in Hong Kong and Singapore.The British Treasury announced a rare retrospective amendment to corporate-tax legislation, after Barclays voluntarily disclosed that it had repurchased its own debt in a "tax-efficient manner".
One of the charges against Mr Fastow, who was given bail of $5m, involves a Nigerian company which Enron is said to have sold to Merrill and then repurchased in order, it is claimed, to inflate Enron's earnings.
Under one cost-sharing agreement, they said, head office sold Puerto Rico certain rights then repurchased them straight afterwards for a lot more, a money manoeuvre that saved the group $4 billion in tax over three years.
Citigroup repurchased $12.8 billion-worth of shares in 2005 and $7 billion-worth in 2006, keeping its capital ratios flat at a time when raising its buffers would have been a better strategy.
Travelers repurchased the red-umbrella corporate logo from Citi just shortly before the current financial storm broke.Ben Hill CardiffCrime in British ColumbiaSIR – I was disappointed by your article on drug-gangs in Vancouver ("British Columbia or Colombia?", May 30th).
Much of this exposure comes from mortgage-backed securities taken over by the government during the crisis and subsequently repurchased by AIG".We have a detailed understanding of these assets," says Mr Benmosche.
They note that American companies repurchased $180 billion-worth of their own stock last year nearly 4% of total stockmarket capitalisation.
In all, America's financial sector repurchased $207 billion of shares between 2006 and 2008.
Because these assets already exist, they can be purchased (and repurchased) without adding directly to GDP or straining the economy's capacity to produce new goods and services.
Though it still represents a tiny share of the market, sales in Latin America have risen by an impressive 30%.IBM raised its dividend by 14% and said it would buy back $3.5 billion-worth of its shares, adding to the $13.2 billion-worth it has repurchased in the past two years.A billionaire software magnate, Larry Ellison, dropped plans, for the moment, to buy Apple Computer.
