Capital Allocation

Capital Allocation
December 2025

Looking Back at M&A in 2025: Behind the Great Rebound

Bain & Company

Article

16 Pages

Bain’s “Looking Back at M&A in 2025” finds that global deal value rebounded sharply—up about 36% to an estimated $4.8 trillion—with tech and AI-related acquisitions leading growth and strategic M&A taking center stage for companies reshaping their businesses.

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Markets
November 2025

Capital Allocation

Morgan Stanley

Michael Mauboussin, Dan Callahan

Research

88 Pages

Michael Mauboussin updates his 2022 study of how public companies in the U.S. spend money.

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Capital Allocation
October 2025

Global economic profit bounces back to an all-time high

McKinsey & Company

Marc de Jong, Peter Stumpner

Research

7 Pages

McKinsey analyzes why global economic profit rebounded sharply after years of decline, drawing on data from the four thousand largest nonfinancial companies since 2005.

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Portfolio Management
March 2025

Dividends and Buybacks – Inertia and Me-tooism!

Aswath Damodaran

Research

23 Pages

Professor Aswath Damodaran provides a framework for thinking about how much cash a business can return to its owners, and then argues that, in reality, this decision is affected by inertia and me-tooism.

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Portfolio Management
October 2024

Buybacks for US, Dividends for EU

Verdad

Chris Satterthwaite

Research

4 Pages

Verdad’s deep dive on shareholder yield finds it “does a relatively good job of spreading returns in a linear fashion, both in the US and abroad.”

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Markets
July 2024

Which One Is It?

Morgan Stanley

Michael Mauboussin

Research

20 Pages

This report examines how public companies manage equity issuance and buybacks, highlighting the importance of aligning actions with intrinsic value. Firms engaging in both simultaneously may undermine shareholder returns if price and value diverge.

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Portfolio Management
March 2024

Why capital allocation matters for companies and investors

T. Rowe Price

David Giroux

Research

6 Pages

David Giroux gives an overview of capital allocation, with examples from Danaher, GE & AutoZone, and explains why he believes finding companies that deploy capital well is still an inefficiency that can be exploited.

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Markets
November 2023

Total Shareholder Return: Linking The Drivers of Total Returns to Fundamentals

Morgan Stanley

Michael Mauboussin, Dan Callahan

Research

32 Pages

Morgan Stanley Investment Management explores how total shareholder return ties stock price, earnings, valuation and capital distributions back to fundamentals.

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Markets
August 2023

The Difference of Dividends

WisdomTree

Alejandro Saltiel, Matt Wagner

Research

6 Pages

WisdomTree analyzes how dividends have driven long run equity returns and how its dividend indexes compare with the S&P 500.

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Markets
December 2022

Capital Allocation: Results, Analysis and Assessment

Morgan Stanley

Michael Mauboussin, Dan Callahan

Research

85 Pages

Morgan Stanley explains why capital allocation is the CEO’s most important job and a major driver of long term value per share.

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Portfolio Management
March 2020

Examining Share Repurchasing and the S&P Buyback Indices in the U.S. Market

S&P Global

Liyu Zeng, Priscilla Luk

Research

27 Pages

S&P Dow Jones Indices examines how share repurchases evolved into the dominant corporate payout method and how related indices behave.

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