R100bn splurge on share buybacks

SA firms are major players in the global buyback mania, which, some say, is fed by executive greed. Nicolene Wesson is a changed woman. Gone is the haunted look that has clouded her face for much of the past five years. Wesson, an academic at the University of Stellenbosch Business School, has recently emerged from the lower reaches of the accounting world: the parts that rarely see the light of day; the parts that are rarely subjected to more than the fleeting eye of a halfway interested third...