Are companies being ripped off by big banks over share buybacks?

Occasionally you meet someone in finance who has a zealous glint in their eye because they’re convinced they’ve stumbled across something everyone else has missed. I had coffee with one such missionary last week.

Michael Seigne, formerly a senior broker at Goldman Sachs and the smaller firm Redburn, has dived down the rabbit hole of share buybacks and emerged with some interesting findings.

Buybacks are what they sound like — the act of a company buying back its own shares. Some bosses, such as Mike Ashley at Frasers Group and Lord (Simon) Wolfson at Next, do them when they think their stock is cheap. Reducing the number of shares in circulation increases earnings per share (EPS). Carried out at the right price, buybacks should produce