Apple acquires a $16 billion stake in... Apple!

Back in April, Apple announced that it will invest $60 billion in repurchasing its own shares from the public by 2015. Even now, it remains the largest authorized share buyback in history.

Tim Cook and Co. obviously weren't kidding, and are actually kicking into an even higher gear – instead of the scheduled repurchase of 10 million shares, Apple went ahead and bought back... 36 million shares.

Philip Elmer-Dewitt with Fortune has put this into perspective – at an average price of $444.44 per share, the company spent $16 billion buying itself a stake in... itself. With that kind of money Apple could have snapped a company like Nokia and still have some money left over.

This means one thing only: Apple really means business. It's aslo apparently more than comfortable in its shoes despite the downturn its stock is experiencing, with CFO Peter Oppenheimer commenting back in April:


source: Fortune