Conventional wisdom has it that when a company doles out a large bundle of cash to investors, it either is feeling generous, is rewarding shareholders for possibly overtaxing their patience or has simply run out of ideas about better ways to spend the money.
In the case of Micro Focus, which bumped up its stock buyback programme last week by $110 million to $510 million, shareholders may be hoping that it is a bit of all three, particularly if the better idea might have been to embark on another massively ambitious takeover.
Micro Focus was founded in 1976 and was listed on the stock market in 2005. It specialises in helping companies to get the best out of their legacy software systems, employing about 14,000