Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc.’s board of directors has authorized the repurchase of up to US$6 billion of the company’s outstanding common shares.

“This authorization will enable us to continue to be active and flexible in managing our equity capital,” noted Jeff Edwards, chief financial officer. “We seek to balance increasing our return on equity and growing our book value per share. To achieve this goal, our primary focus is to deploy capital into profitable growth opportunities. But to the extent we generate excess capital, we will continue to use share repurchases, as well as cash dividends, to return capital to stockholders.”

The firm says that the buyback authorization will be exercised from time to time, subject to market conditions, the relative attractiveness of other capital deployment opportunities, and regulatory considerations. Any repurchases are intended to make appropriate adjustments to the company’s capital structure, it adds.