"Both Welch and Immelt behaved as if their body odour was perfume. They believed their own hype and bought back stock and stock and more stock. Total shares repurchased were over 100 billion dollars. Just 30 billion of that money now would solve the credit rating problems."
(https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2018/02/19/1519031430000/The-buyback-backlash--GE-as-exhibit-A/)
"GE... was one of Wall Street’s major share buyback operators between 2015 and 2017; it repurchased $40 billion of shares at prices between $20 and $32. The share price is now $8.60, so the company has liquidated between $23 billion and $29 billion of its shareholders’ money on this utterly futile activity alone."
(https://www.marketwatch.com/story/misguided-share-buybacks-are-hollowing-out-companies-balance-sheets-and-will-lead-to-even-bigger-trouble-2018-11-20)
"I'm willing to bet anyone that the $46 billion GE spent over the last decade on buybacks, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices, and the $24 billion the company spent on buybacks in 2016 and 2017 alone, would be better served in its checking account, giving it more runway to restructure the company back to profitability."
(https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/11/investors-should-be-furious-3-stock-buybacks-that-went-horribly-wrong.html)