A Day for Share Buy Backs

From a quick piece of analysis I note that today 15 FTSE 100 companies announced they had bought back of some of their own shares: BT, Glaxo, Unilever, Diageo, Compass, Shell, BP, M&S, Reuters, Schroders, Whitbread, Legal & General, National Grid, Anglo American and Old Mutual. I own 4 of these. I have no historical analysis at all and have not looked deeper to analyse how many shares were bought in each case, but this looks to me like a fairly exceptional event for one day and a clear demonstration (across 15% of the largest UK listed companies) of strong corporate balance sheets coupled with low share prices. In the case of BT for example the yield is so high that there is a clear near term cashflow benefit from increasing borrowings to retire equity thereby saving on the dividend!