Firms bought back S$72.6m of shares in September

Singapore

SOME S$72.6 million in stock were repurchased by 35 companies in September, with the biggest repurchase made by DBS, data from the Singapore Exchange showed on Tuesday.

That took the share buybacks for the three quarters of the year to S$752 million. This is down 56 per cent from a year ago. But the buybacks in 2015 included a strong surge in purchases in August. Companies then bought back S$544 million in shares that month alone, reflecting a volatile month of trading as the Straits Times Index fell 8.1 per cent in August 2015.