Baldwin, Colleagues to Commerce Department: Prevent Stock Buybacks by Corporations That Receive CHIPS Act Funds
“Without strict controls, we are concerned that CHIPS funding may result in a subsidy for additional buybacks, enriching executives and stockholders at taxpayers’ expense while undermining the goals of the legislation.”
Washington, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senators Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), and Representatives Sean Casten (D-IL), Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), and Bill Foster (D-IL) sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo urging the Commerce Department to strengthen and enforce critical protections against the abuse of funds provided under the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) Act for stock buybacks and promising continued Congressional oversight over the Department’s implementation of its commitments.
The CHIPS Act provides $52 billion in funding to build and modernize U.S. semiconductor manufacturing facilities. The Department of Commerce is tasked with distributing this assistance to semiconductor manufacturers. While the legislation specifically prohibits the use of CHIPS funds for stock buybacks and dividend payments, these restrictions do not explicitly prohibit award recipients from using CHIPS funds to free up their own funds, which they can then use for those purposes.
America’s largest semiconductor companies have spent hundreds of billions on stock buybacks in recent years. Since 2005, Intel has spent over $100 billion on buybacks. Texas Instruments has spent $48 billion on buybacks in the same period, including nearly $14 billion in the last five years alone. Qualcomm, Broadcom, and Micron have all announced $10 billion stock buyback authorizations in recent years. IBM routinely engages in multi-billion-dollar buybacks. In total, five of these companies – Intel, IBM, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and Broadcom – alone engaged in nearly $250 billion in stock buybacks from 2011 to 2020.
“While the existing guidelines are a productive start, we urge and expect the Department to announce additional protections and to refine its existing guidance over the coming weeks and months. We also ask that the Department ensure all of these commitments are incorporated into any future Notice(s) of Funding Opportunity arising from the program and are supported by the resources necessary to ensure robust oversight,” continued the lawmakers.
Full text of the letter can be found here.
An online version of this release is available here.
NOTE: This press release was submitted to Urban Milwaukee and was not written by an Urban Milwaukee writer. While it is believed to be reliable, Urban Milwaukee does not guarantee its accuracy or completeness.
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