EXPRESS
While ordinary Brits struggle BP and Shell shareholders celebrate Putin-war pay-day
Today BP announced it had made £7.1bn in profit over the last three months. Tagged onto their profit figures was the announcement that the oil giant would initiate a new round of share buybacks totalling $2.5 billion.
By DR GEORGE DIBB
Share buybacks, which involve a company repurchasing its own stock to artificially boost its overall share price, were illegal in the UK until 1981 because they were considered a form of market manipulation. Last week, Shell also announced it would spend nearly half of its $9.5 billion profits on a bumper $4 billion buyback programme for shareholders. At the same time, the oil multinational revealed it hadn’t paid a single penny of the windfall tax in the UK.