Publication Type
Book Chapter
Version
Publisher’s Version
Publication Date
9-2020
Abstract
Corporate payouts, especially through stock buybacks, are never short of critics. COVID-19 has simply energized them further. From the energy industry to airlines and banks, US public companies are blamed for ensnaring themselves into the abysmal crisis in the midst of COVID-19 by handing out cashes extravagantly to buy back stocks years before. However, as astutely pointed out by Professors Jesse Fried and Charles Wang, the critics did not get the facts right even before COVID-19. After taking into consideration the amount of newly raised capital through equity or debt issuances, the cumulative net payouts by US public companies between 2007 and 2016 totalled just above 40% of their net income, not reaching even a half of what the critics claimed to be.
Keywords
corporate law, stocks, Singapore, COVID-19, pandemic, public health
Discipline
Business Organizations Law | Public Health
Research Areas
Asian and Comparative Legal Systems
Publication
Law and COVID-19
Editor
Aurelio Gurrea-Martinez, Mark Findlay and Goh Yihan
First Page
98
Last Page
100
ISBN
9781467396172
Publisher
School of Law, Singapore Management University
City or Country
Singapore
Embargo Period
4-19-2021
Citation
ZHANG, Wei.
Stock buybacks: some old norm should remain new. (2020). Law and COVID-19. 98-100.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sol_research/3221
Copyright Owner and License
Authors
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Additional URL
https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3686357