Infosys, Asia's second-largest software exporter, last month said it would buy Rs 82.6 billion of its own stock
S&P Global Ratings Tuesday said corporate activities that are designed to support the government coffers -- such as share buyback -- by PSUs are 'credit negative' for such entities. In the past three months, 10 public sector undertakings (PSUs) have announced or executed buybacks for a cumulative amount of Rs 15,000 crore, which will count toward the government's target of Rs 80,000 crore from disinvestment of state-owned entities. "S&P Global Ratings foresees credit risks at Indian SOEs (state-owned enterprises) from corporate activity designed to support the Indian government's budgetary coffers," the US-based rating agency said in a statement. The impact on the respective companies can vary depending on the size of cash outflow, it added. "Extracting cash from SOEs decreases their financial flexibility in a stress scenario, which -- at least over the short term -- is credit negative at the firm level," S&P said. It said while extraction of existing excess capital in the
Accenture and IBM conduct share repurchase every year as part of their plans to return back free cash to shareholders
According to the agency, TCS and Infosys have cash balances of $6.6 billion and $4.4 billion
16 launched in 2015-16, up from 10 in 2014-15