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Technology Stocks : Disk Drive Sector Discussion Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Frodo Baxter who wrote (3534)	6/7/1998 9:41:00 PM
From: LK2	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9256

*ODD TOPICNot part of disk drive sector** The Japanese are once again learning American capitalism. A general, massive share-buyback program could be starting soon... Will stock options be the next step? Forget the stock options, for now. This could be a major shift in the Japanese stock market. Whether the Japanese stock market does better or worse than some other market in the future (for example, versus the US market), the Japanese stock market could move up nicely based on this stock buyback. Any opinions pro or con, Lawrence, GM, anybody? (I'm not talking about the fundamental economic value of a stock buyback, or what the Japanese economy will do, or whatever. I'm saying this could be a major boost to stock performance, which is a separate issue.) >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> dailynews.yahoo.com Sunday June 7 7:35 AM EDT Japanese companies plan 6 trln yen in buy-backs TOKYO (Reuters) - One in three publicly traded Japanese companies is planning to buy back or retire its shares, and the total buy-backs could tally some 6 trillion yen ($42.8 billion), a Japanese financial daily reported on Sunday. The buy-backs are aimed at increasing investor equity and some 10 billion shares could be retired in all, according to a survey conducted by the Nihon Keizai Shimbun. The buy-back practice should also boost share prices on stagnant markets in Tokyo, it said. About 900 companies traded on the stock exchange or on the over-the counter market have changed their corporate bylaws or will do so quickly in order to allow share buy-backs, according to the survey. The total stock retirement should come to about 9.7 billion shares, which is roughly equal to the total number of new shares issued since 1995, it said. The number of outstanding shares totalled 360.5 billion as of the end of fiscal 1997 on March 31, 1998, which marks a 40 percent increase from the days before Japan's economic bubble of fiscal 1985, the paper said. <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< Larry PS: The estimated share buyback would be less than 3% of the shares outstanding. So maybe the effect wouldn't be that significant after all. But I think it's interesting that Japan (or Japanese stock companies) are starting to behave like this.