According to Brian Reynolds, the chief market analyst at the research firm Reynolds Strategy, upon whose research the article is based, corporate buybacks have been the “only net source of money entering the stock market” since 2008.
The sole purpose of buyback programs is to enhance the wealth of the executives who sit atop the major corporations as well as hedge funds and other traders in shares. By cutting the number of shares on issue, the stock of the corporation rises. Executives and others can then exercise their stock options to make a killing while hedge funds strike at the opportune time and rake in billions.
The buybacks are financed by using the accumulated profits of the company
or, in some cases, by the raising of debt, taking advantage of the ultra-low interest rate policies of the US Federal Reserve.
According to the economist William O. Lazonick, the proportion of corporate buybacks funded through the issuing of bonds went as high as 30 percent in both 2016 and 2017.
As a result of the economic lockdown, airlines have been in front line of corporations, with both hands out, demanding money from the government. They have also been among those most involved in share buybacks that have led to the running down of their cash reserves.
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Lazonick reported that in the decade 2010-2019, the four major US airlines (American, Delta, United and Southwest) plus the two largest cargo airlines (Fedex and UPS) together distributed “just over 80 percent of their profits in the form of buybacks (56 percent) and dividends (25 percent). At these six airlines alone, buybacks over the past decade were $77 billion, with 71 percent of them done in 2015-2019.”
The six CEOs received $19.6 million a year on average, with some 81 percent of their money coming from realised gains from the exercise of stock options and the “vesting of stock awards”—a process in which the recipient has to wait for a period of time before being able to exercise the option.
And then there is the case of Boeing. As has now been established, Boeing went ahead with its 737 Max that put a new engine on an old aircraft structure, leading to the death of 346 people in two crashes.
The cost of developing a new aircraft architecture, estimated at $7 billion, would have been significantly less, as Lazonick notes, than the $11 billion it spent on share buybacks between 2004 and 2008.
After receiving 2,500 orders for the MAX by the beginning of 2013, “Boeing went on a buyback spree that reached a total of $43 billion by the first week of March in 2019.”
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/04/07/para-a07.html