Corporate governance in 2005
By John Schroy, on March 16th, 2006 |

Repurchases of company stock, mostly under the safe harbor exemption from market manipulation provided by SEC Rule 10b-18, set an all time record of $366 billion (net) in 2005. This was 260% of levels in 2004 and 880% of buybacks in 2002.
Despite extremely aggressive tactics of corporate management to manipulate stock prices upwards and give value to option and bonus plans, stock prices rose only about 3% in 2005, on average.
Fund management
By John Schroy, on March 7th, 2006 |

Legg Mason, the giant asset management company that was recently sold off by Citigroup, issued a report on January 10, 2006 by Michael Mauboussin, Chief Investment Strategist, entitled, “Clear Thinking About Share Repurchases”.
The general tenor of the Legg Mason commentary seems to be favorable towards buybacks, especially extremely large buybacks that are aggressively pursued and that, presumably, are more effective in jacking up stock prices and making investment managers look good.
'Defined Benefit' Pension Plans
By John Schroy, on February 26th, 2006 |

The sponsors of ‘defined benefits’ pension plans controlled, as of December 2004, about US $2.5 trillion in equities. Common stocks, even after the crash of 2000-2001, were substantially over-valued. In order for stock prices to reflect values that were customary before the advent of stock buybacks, prices would have to drop between 20% (earnings basis) and 50% (dividend yield basis).
In the case of ‘defined benefits’ pension plans, this would represent a loss of between US$500 billion and US$1.2 trillion in market value of pension portfolios.
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