Share buy-backs must be one of the most talked-about, most praised tools in the corporate restructuring kit. The Americans certainly like the strategy: in 1997 share buy-backs totalled $77 billion. But in Europe the hype has still to translate into reality. In the first 11 months of 1998 just $20.2 billion of stock was bought back, and $15 billion of that was generated by UK companies, according to figures from JP Morgan.
Not that you can blame the companies all of the time.
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