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I think we have our own War and Peace on these boards and I look forward to catching up later today

New range on Reebok will make us all millionaires....

I'm not sure about the other company but I think we can safely say that OTB would cost in excess of $800m

The Meiji Yasuda presentation from February gives a little more detail. Slide 9 shows dividends of £3.6bn and buybacks of £1.4bn+ (£1.8bn might be considered a best guess based on 40% of market cap) which is clearly better than the current £1.2bn dividend increasing at 5% p.a. even if the difference is largely made up of the £1.2bn proceeds from the deal. It also happens to be consistent with a declining dividend payout and buybacks increasing at 20% p.a.

What I can't see is capital reinvested in new business. Asset management and wealth business should be "capital-light" and only the PRT and annuity business that involves significant capital investment. Page 14 of the presentation gives a figure of £5-6bn for capital generation over the 3 years but even this might be "net" of the capital required to support new business.

Based on that information it's not clear who the real owner is here. Most likely someone is depositing the shares in a UBS collateral account as security for something else so perhaps it is something to do with the share option scheme.

True, even for those paying 39% tax on dividends - though they would have probably B&B'ed the stock to turn the dividend into a capital gain. For me, the whole point of filling up at the £7+ level was to play the arbitrage game between dividends and CGT but the SP performance has been a big bonus.

Not that there isn't also very good money to be made trading here too given the swings in the share price in late-May. I managed to pick up a "free" 5% dividend from topping up when the SP retreated close to £3 - a price that now looks ridiculously cheap.

Ok, that seems fairly clear re:dividends but the buyback information is very old as they have already announced a £500m buyback in 2025 of which they appear to have completed 70-80% with the reduction in share volumes of around 2.7% since March. By the end of the programme, total shares will be nearly 3.5-4% lower meaning that total dividends (assuming a 2% annual per share increase) would be 2% lower year on year.

If we assume that total distributions increase at 5% p.a. this would mean that buybacks would need to increase by 20% (to £600m) to offset the reduction in total dividends paid.

I had a lot of difficulty finding any of these shares to buy last week (using AJ Bell) though there are clearly shares changing hands in larger volumes than I was looking for.

2% dividend increase feels a little low to me; I had in mind something closer to 5%. The buybacks alone are reducing share volumes by around 2.5% p.a. so simply maintaining the same payout would increase the per share dividend by 2.5%.

I see the dividend yield has drifted below that of Phoenix in the last couple of weeks - my personal view is that there ought to be a c20-25bp differential there so L&G remains relatively cheap (marginally)

Where are you seeing the term being used?

Collateral accounts are general set up to provide security against some other liability or obligation though it seems more likely that it is UBS holding the collateral on behalf of someone else. Quite unusual that JOG shares would be allowed as collateral but maybe the increase is caused by the fall in the SP - ie value of existing collateral falls so they have to provide more shares as collateral - hence the increase in the holding to just over 5% (note that this is not an EXTRA 5%).

That's my guess at least.

I decided to offload around 1/3rd of my holding yesterday morning after seeing the IC article. I've been overweight in BMY for most of this year and it seemed as good a time as any to pare back my exposure after IC stuck a sell recommendation on the stock.

I'm fairly happy picking these up right now at a 4.8% dividend yield.

The usual 8am volatility while the market finds a price. I'm not willing to make a call where this will end up but I took the update as a mildly positive story.

Have they confirmed the interim dividend or is the 2% number just pulled out of thin air?

Https://theoakbloke.substack.com/p/tmt-oh-so-juicy

Something looks to be up...

It's only a month since they gave us a share buyback and guidance on the dividend. The shares are up 18% over that period and have now broken through 150p.

Let's not be greedy.

There's some fairly consistent buying here. Could be some news ready to break.

On the bright side, this extension is only a week.

A long way to £20...but a journey of 1000 miles starts with one step.

It would be rare indeed if anything said on the LSE boards mattered when it came to companies worth over £1bn. But for Burford, the only trading that matters these days is in NY.