Which companies offer stock when prices are low? Very rare I believe. Established companies don't generally make additional stock offerings to the public unless they are spinning off part of their company into a separate entity. And in that case it's the new company stock that is being offered.
I agree in general that buybacks are often financial engineering that doesn't benefit the long-term health of the company, and can often hurt the future, but usually enriches the officers in the short term.
1)
AIG -
March 2, 2007
BOSTON (MarketWatch) — Shares of American International Group Inc. got an early lift Friday, gaining as the company reported higher fourth-quarter net income and said its board has approved a major stock-repurchase plan.
On September 16, 2008, in exchange of the money it pumped into the company, the U.S. government received nearly 80% of the firm's equity. For decades, AIG was the world's biggest insurer, a company known around the world for providing protection for individuals, companies, and others. But in September, the company would have gone under if it were not for government assistance.
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Lehman Brothers - NEW YORK, Jan 29 2008 (Reuters) – Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc, the Wall Street investment bank, on Tuesday raised its common stock dividend 13 percent and said its board of directors authorized the buyback of up to 100 million shares.
New York-based Lehman said the buyback program covers nearly 19 percent of its 530.6 million shares outstanding at year end, and supersedes a prior authorization.
The shares covered by the new program are worth about $6.25 billion, based on Lehman’s Tuesday closing price. Lehman shares rose $1.90, or 3.1 percent, on Tuesday to close at $62.53 on the New York Stock Exchange.
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Bank of America
In an almost comical sequence of events in the years before the crisis, Bank of America spent $40 billion on buybacks only to then have to raise roughly the same amount of capital after the crisis took hold. There are few companies that have destroyed more shareholder value through share buybacks over the last few years than Bank of America.
Between 2003 and 2007, it repurchased a little over 768 million shares of its common stock at an average price of $52.05 per share, equating to a grand total of just under $40 billion.
A year and a half later, the Federal Reserve ordered it to raise $33.9 billion in new capital "in order to weather two years of the most severe economic circumstance."
It did so, and then some, by issuing 3.5 billion new shares in 2009 at an average price of $13.47 per share for a grand total of $47.5 billion.
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GENERAL MOTORS: G.M. had many buybacks before the financial crisis, totaling $20.4 billion from 1986 to 2002.
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GE After buying back more than 50 billion in the preceding 10 years of company stock in 2008 GE was forced to sell stock convertible at $22 with a 10 percent dividend to Warren Buffet in the financial crisis, and also issued 12 billion in common stock, that provided nearly as many shares as were previously retired. Buying stock at 40 and reissuing stock in single digits is what GE seems to most excel at
Just a few years before AIG, GE and Bank of AMerica were among the largest companies in capitalization.
