London, June 22, 2026, 14:09 BST
- Legal & General was quoted at 288.6p to sell and 288.8p to buy, up 1.9%, against a 0.55% rise in the FTSE 100.
- The latest disclosed tally shows £389.6 million spent on 152.9 million shares at an average 256.61p.
- Planned shareholder returns of £2.4 billion over the next year equal roughly 15% of L&G’s current equity value.
Legal & General Group Plc (LSE:LGEN) rose about 1.9% in Monday afternoon trading, reaching a bid-offer midpoint of 288.7p. The insurer outpaced the FTSE 100 by roughly 1.4 percentage points.
The gain was not isolated. Aviva advanced about 1.7%, while the broader UK blue-chip index recovered from an early decline, pointing to a market and sector component in L&G’s move rather than a single-company trigger.
What matters for L&G now is the gap between its share price and the cost of its buyback — purchases of its own shares that are then cancelled. Through June 11, the group had paid an average 256.61p for 152.88 million shares, about 12.5% below Monday’s quoted midpoint, leaving 5.548 billion shares in issue. The first £600 million tranche is scheduled to run no later than September 18 as part of the full £1.2 billion programme.
Information gain: Based on the latest tally, £810.4 million remains under the full programme. Spending that at 288.7p would retire about 281 million more shares, equal to 5.1% of the current share count. With profit unchanged and no new employee-plan issuance, that reduction would mechanically lift earnings per share, or EPS, by about 5.3% from the present base. Including shares already purchased, the programme could remove roughly 434 million shares, or about 7.6% of a reconstructed pre-buyback base.
There is a second calculation. L&G has said the buyback and dividends should return about £2.4 billion over the next year. Using Monday’s price and the latest disclosed share count gives an equity value near £16 billion, putting that distribution at almost 15% of market value. The 2025 dividend of 21.79p alone represents a yield of about 7.5%; this is a cash-distribution measure, not an expected share-price return.
The operating picture is less clean. Core operating profit rose 6% to £1.62 billion in 2025 and core EPS increased 9%, but the pro-forma Solvency II coverage ratio fell to 210% from 232% and missed forecasts. Solvency II measures an insurer’s eligible capital against the amount regulators require. Chief Executive António Simões said, “In two years, we’ve reshaped the company,” and described the capital ratio as “very comfortable.” Reuters
The UK backdrop remained unsettled after Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he would resign. The FTSE 100 initially slipped 0.1%, while the yield on the benchmark 10-year gilt — a UK government bond — reached its highest since 2008 before equities recovered. David Morrison, senior market analyst at Trade Nation, said he did not think “any replacement … is going to be much different,” suggesting investors will keep focusing on borrowing costs and fiscal policy rather than personalities alone. Reuters
But the buyback arithmetic is not a profit forecast. At 320p, the remaining cash would purchase about 253 million shares, nearly 10% fewer than at 288.7p. A decline of roughly 8% in group earnings would also erase the full programme’s estimated mechanical EPS benefit. More fundamentally, March’s below-forecast capital ratio showed how asset revaluations and market moves can outweigh a large headline capital return.
The next scheduled test is L&G’s half-year report on August 5. The shares are due to trade without entitlement to the interim dividend on August 20; until then, buyback disclosures, gilt yields and evidence of improvement in asset-management earnings are likely to set the tone.
