Vincent Boland: Time for a debate on the potentially dangerous blowback of buyback

Companies buying up their own shares is nothing new in the corporate world, and Apple is merely the latest behemoth to do it, but it remains a controversial practice

Tim Cook, the Apple chief executive: In the first century of this year, Apple spent nearly $19 billion buying its own shares on the stock market

Apple unveiled no fewer than seven new products last week, which is more than many companies introduce in a lifetime. Some of these were variations on existing Apple gadgets, but what they all have in common is that they are designated “13” – as in the iPhone 13. Given the popularity of its products, we can be fairly sure that this will be lucky 13 for Apple.

As it was investing billions of dollars on ...