A treasury stock or reacquired stock is stock which is bought back by the issuing company, reducing the amount of outstanding stock on the open market ("open market" including insiders' holdings).
Stock repurchases are often used as a tax-efficient method to put cash into shareholders' hands, rather than paying dividends. Sometimes, companies do this when they feel that their stock is undervalued on the open market. Other times, companies do this to provide a "bonus" to incentive compensation plans for employees. Rather than receive cash, recipients receive an asset that might appreciate in value faster than cash saved in a bank account. Another motive for stock repurchase is to protect the company against a takeover threat.
The United Kingdom equivalent of treasury stock as used in the United States is treasury share. Treasury stocks in the UK refers to government bonds or gilts.
Read more about Treasury Stock: Limitations of Treasury Stock, Accounting For Treasury Stock, United States Regulations, United Kingdom Regulations
Famous quotes containing the words treasury and/or stock:
“Listen to me, imbecile. If the Treasury is important, then human life is not. This is clear. All those who think like you ought to admit this reasoning and count their lives for nothing because they hold money for everything.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“In the case of our main stock of well-worn predicates, I submit that the judgment of projectibility has derived from the habitual projection, rather than the habitual projection from the judgment of projectibility. The reason why only the right predicates happen so luckily to have become well entrenched is just that the well entrenched predicates have thereby become the right ones.”
—Nelson Goodman (b. 1906)