An Empirical Analysis Of Share Buybacks In India

Share buybacks have become a common event in the financial markets worldwide. In a share buyback programme, the company distributes the excess cash flow among the shareholders by way of repurchasing its own shares, generally at a premium. Among the various reasons for doing so, the most prominent is the fact that the company wants to indicate to the share holders that it has huge confidence in itself. In India share buybacks were introduced in 1998 and has received attention of all major companies. Since then there has been a spate of announcement of share buybacks. This paper examines empirically the announcement period price reaction and whether management is acting in the best interest of non-tendering shareholders when it engages in targeted share buyback. An exhaustive list of all the financial parameters was considered for the purpose of analysis and the data was collected through online databases. A trend analysis was performed on various parameters like share prices of these companies during and post buyback period. Various performance measures were also used to draw conclusion regarding their trends from pre buyback to post buyback period. The study established that for the Indian corporate, the long term advantages of share buyback are not clear. Buyback process is generally used to improve the shareholding of promoters of the company, and with a view to impart short term gains for the investors. The study also points out that buyback norms should be made more stringent for Indian context, if the companies are to have a long-term view. In the end, the study lays down possible directions in which further research could be done on this topic.