CEOs Tap Record Cash for Payouts as M&A at Post-Lehman High

US executives are starting to spend the record $940 billion in cash they built up after the credit crisis, just in time for annual shareholder meetings. Takeovers topped $260 billion this quarter, the most since the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in September 2008, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Standard & Poor’s 500 Index companies authorized 38 percent more buybacks in 2011 than a year earlier and dividends may increase to a record $31.07 a share in 2013, data compiled by Birinyi Associates Inc. and Bloomberg show. Chief executive officers are looking for ways to increase investor returns after posting the biggest gain in profits since 1988 by relying on near-zero Federal Reserve interest rates and cost cuts that have kept the unemployment rate near a 26-year high. More takeovers were announced last week than any time since March 2010 after AT&T Inc. in Dallas offered $39 billion for Bonn-based Deutsche Telekom AG’s U.S. wireless unit and San Francisco-based Charles Schwab Corp. agreed to buy OptionsXpress Holdings Inc. of Chicago for $1.11 billion in stock.