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back to article Microsoft, HP shower shareholders with buyback cash

Microsoft is trying to put a floor under its share price in a tumbling stock market by launching the biggest share buyback program in history. The software vendor announced the $40bn (sort of) jamboree for shareholders yesterday, as HP declared it too would open up the coffers and buy back shares to the tune of $8bn. …

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  1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

    "...an unprecedentedly volatile market..."

    That is just sooo last week, you know. OK, for a few days it looked like it might spill out of the banking sector and affect people who actually do real stuff for a living, but then the Feds went in and announced that the US taxpayer would pay to clean up the mess (caused in large part by the US taxpayer spending the last 15 years on credit). Within 24 hours, everyone had relaxed except for the politicians who were looking for an external cause for their internal problems and financial journalists who were looking for an end-of-the-world story to make the business pages interesting.

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  2. Anonymous Coward
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    Borrow from the bank to buy your own shares?

    The bank loan will want repaying. Presumably the bank will want real money, rather then Collateralised Debt Obligations or other unvaluable pieces of paper (eg MS shares).

    I'm sure it makes sense to someone, especially someone in the world of high finance.

    "caused in large part by the US taxpayer spending the last 15 years on credit"

    I think you'll find that was caused by ill-advised lending to folks who've never had a cat in hell's chance of paying it back, but who cares, the folks doing those deals hit their quotas and thus got their megabonuses, right?

    And how about the folks who are "lending" (donating?) to the US to fund the US's national debt at the moment, which iirc is currently around $30,000 per citizen, which is also unlikely to be repaid in any foreseeable future. China alone has lent $500billion to the US treasury, and a whole lot more than that if you count other "arm's length from government" deals. Japan has similar amounts. Congress wants to extend the debt limits to $11trillion, or not far off a whole year's GDP for the USA. A bit like me using all my annual wages to pay my mortgage, only more zeroes on the numbers, and no meaningful assets (like my home) to back the loans. Actually it's more like me using my wages to *not* repay the mortgage, in the hope that my kids will pay it one day. The whole US of A is bankrupt, not just its financial sector.

    Incidentally, rather than having the US (and UK) taxpayer pay for all this entirely-predictable financial mess, can't we just have the financial spivs, wideboys and whizzkids pay for some of it by returning some of their clearly undeserved bonus payments - over $2bn last year at Lehman's alone for example (bonus money which in the short term is being paid for by customers of Barclays, a UK company). How much per taxpayer is $2bn when shared amongst US taxpayers?

    Lehman's UK subsidiary also managed to ship £4Bn over the pond to parent company Lehman USA in the hours before Lehman UK went under.

    Who needs enemies when you've got the Gordon and George duet? I hope "Dubya's" taxpayer-funded rescue deal *does* fall apart, the sector deserves to collapse - though in the short term it wouldn't be much good for my pension, in the longer term it might be better for most of us if the moneychangers were permanently expelled from the temple.

    http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/banking_and_finance/article4795072.ece

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