NOC bought $750 million of stock from Credit Suisse ($64.78 *11.58 million shares), who apparently sold short and will go into the market over the next few months to buy shares to cover its position. It’s not clear to me (IR hasn’t called me back) whether reported earnings per share can be calculated as of the date of the transaction using the smaller number of shares, or whether the short has to be covered before the share count is reduced.

AutoNation said the stock repurchase of approximately 50 million shares, represents about 19% of its outstanding shares. Existing owners are being offered $23 a share on a pro-rated basis for their stock, a 5.2% premium to AutoNation’s closing price of $21.86 on Thursday.

On March 1,2006, the Board of Directors of CVS approved a thirty percent increase in the annual retainer for non-employee directors from $50,000 to $65,000, payable 50% in CVS stock and 50% in cash.

Members of a Compensation Committee are recomended by the Governance and Nominating Committee and are appointed by and serve at the discretion of the Board of Directors.

The Company operates in two reportable segments: (1) Specialty Services, which is comprised of specialty pharmacy distribution and clinical management services for complex and life-threatening health conditions, such as HIV/AIDS, cancer, and organ transplantation; and (2) PBM Services, which is comprised of fully integrated pharmacy benefit management and traditional mail RX services. The Company generates revenue principally through the sale of prescription drugs, which are dispensed either through a pharmacy participating in Bioscrip’s retail network in the PBM Services segment or by a pharmacy owned by the Company.

But the fact that these plans have proliferated leads to a general sense that they are being abused. Case in point: Critical Therapeutics (CRTX) filed an 8-K a few weeks ago announcing that the CEO had terminated his 10b5-1 plan after selling only 40,000 shares over the past 4 months instead of the allotted 180,000 shares over 18 months. Initial sales were at $8.65 but deteriorated to $6.48 at the end of January when the last of the pre-arranged sales was made. And it might not surprise you that today, CRTX’s stock price is $5.49. In short, business as usual.