From: "Stephen Burke" 
Newsgroups: uk.finance uk.finance.stockmarket
Subject: Re: What happens if a company buys back all shares ?
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Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2004 00:07:49 +0100

Art  wrote:
> Now, what happens if a company buys back every single outstanding
> share? Is this possible? And if so, will the company then own itself?
> What would this mean?

Usually companies trade at a price above their asset value, i.e. even if the
company liqidated all its assets and used the cash to buy back shares it
wouldn't have enough to buy all of them (except of course that if a company
destroyed itself in that way the price would fall). Even if shares trade below
the asset value, which can happen, as it bought shares the remaining assets
would be shared between fewer and fewer shares and the price would rise.
Either way you would end up with the last shareholders getting all the
remaining assets. However, as a general principle it isn't impossible for
corporate bodies to be owned by no-one, e.g. charities and trusts, and when
TSB was privatised many years ago it was deemed to be effectively owned by
no-one.

-- 
Stephen Burke