New York
CORPORATE America has its eye on a new target as executives look to tighten their belts amid a slump in profits - and this time shareholders will not like it.
After snapping up trillions of dollars of their own stock in a five-year shopping binge that dwarfed every other buyer, US companies from Apple Inc to IBMCorp just put on the brakes. Announced repurchases dropped 38 per cent to US$244 billion in the last four months, the biggest decline since 2009, data compiled by Birinyi Associates and Bloomberg show.
Coming amid the worst profit slump since the financial crisis, the slowdown may signal that companies are preserving cash as economic and political uncertainty whips up from Europe...
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