Open market repurchases: signaling or managerial opportunism?
Managers conduct open market repurchases ("OMRs") for many different reasons, including to distribute excess cash. However, the most widely discussed explanation for OMRs is the "signaling theory": that managers announce OMRs to signal that the stock is underpriced. The first purpose of this paper is to show that the...

Company Watch - Qantas Airways.
May 5, 2008 Qantas is raising fares on tickets sold from 9 May, and its CEO Geoff Dixon admitted yesterday that [sup.3]if high fuel prices persist beyond this point it would be of increasing concern.[sup.2] Its domestic fares rise by around 3.5% and international ones by 3%....

Alaska Air Group Completes Stock Repurchase Program.
TRAVEL AND LEISURE CLOSE-UP-11 March 2008-Alaska Air Group Completes Stock Repurchase Program(C)2008 - CloseUpMedia - newsdesk@closeupmedia.com Alaska Air Group has announced the completion of a $100 million stock repurchase program authorized by its board of directors on Sept. 13, 2007. Under the program, the company...

Airline Finance News - Latin America / Caribbean.
Feb 4, 2008 GOL Linhas Aereas GOL Linhas Aereas Inteligentes's new route network was conceived in order to provide business customers with adequate schedules and frequency. The new network will connect the most important business and tourism centers, benefiting from the return of connections at...

Airline Finance News - Europe.
Jan 14, 2008 Aer Lingus Irish airline Aer Lingus said on Tuesday it carried 695,000 passengers last month or 9.6 percent more than in December 2006, thanks to new routes and planes, but flights were not as full as a year ago. The former state...

Amgen Board Authorizes Stock Repurchase.
SciTech21-13 December 2006-Amgen Board Authorizes Stock Repurchase(C)2006 JeraOne - http://www.jeraone.com Amgen today announced that its board of directors has authorized additional repurchases of up to $5 billion in Amgen common stock. The company currently has $1.5 billion remaining under its previous stock repurchase authorization and...

The compromised board candidate: if you are involved in nominating and approving new directors, you want to catch conflicts of interest before they catch you. Here are the lines of inquiry to pursue and useful research tools.
SPRING IS UPON US, and with it proxy season and the annual blossoming of fight letters in the financial pages. We can probably expect to see more of these hardy perennials bloom in 2006, with their customary accusations that corporate directors are compromised by conflicts of interest or otherwise...

Wake of the Terror. (BERMUDA ANGLE).
Half of the $2 billion-plus capital likely to be lost by the Bermuda insurance market as a result of the events of September 11 was replaced within three weeks. Marsh & McLennan and RenaissanceReled the response to an acute shortage of property and casualty capacity in the...

RUSSIA - April 22 - Yukos & Sibneft To Create Global Oil Group.
Yukos and Sibneft announce plans for a $36 bn merger to create a global-scale operator. Yukos plans to pay $3 bn in cash and offer 29% of the equity in the combined group to buy out Sibneft's shareholders. Yukos is also expected to reduce its estimated $4 bn-plus cash...

Joe Plumeri, playing in traffic: with his quest for adventure and 'just go for it' philosophy, the CEO of insurance broker Willis Group Holdings has got the competitive spirit kicking in again at this 175-year-old company.
IN MARCH 2004 global insurance broker Willis Group Holdings unveiled the design of its new headquarters in London--a stunning showcase building that promises be an architectural icon (see illustration on page 20). To say that this announcement was a satisfying moment for the company's chairman and CEO, Joe Plumeri,...