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Glite Dictionary
treasury shares

treasury shares

7.4
Shares the company has bought back and keeps that have no voting rights
  • noun
  • /ˈtrɛʒəri ʃɛrz/
  • UK
translation icon : acciones en tesorería
  • Treasury shares do not entitle the corporation to vote at shareholder meetings.

Examples

  • After the merger, the business held a significant amount of treasury shares for future corporate actions.

  • The company increased its treasury shares after buying back stock from the open market.

  • The company bought back treasury shares to increase shareholder value.

  • Why did they issue treasury shares last year?

  • The company decided to retain its treasury shares to stabilize its stock price during market fluctuations.

  • After the buyback, the CEO announced that the treasury shares would not be reissued for at least two years.

  • Investors were pleased to learn that the firm had increased its holdings of treasury shares after the recent market downturn.

Synonyms

treasury stock
vstreasury shares
  • Specialized
7.5

Shares a company buys back and keeps that have no voting rights or dividends

is defined by being held in the company's treasury and not outstanding
reacquired stock
vstreasury shares
  • Specialized
8.2

Shares a company has bought back and keeps without voting rights or payments to owners

is about shares held by the issuer in its treasury not counted as outstanding

Surface Forms

treasury shares singular
treasury share plural

Morphology

treasury + share

The phrase is compositionally built from 'treasury' and 'share', so a learner could guess it refers to shares held in a treasury (i.e., owned/kept rather than actively traded). However, the precise financial/legal meaning — that these are company‑held shares bought back and not considered outstanding — is specialized and may be ambiguous (e.g., confusion with a government treasury), so full understanding requires domain knowledge.

Etymology

Treasury shares comes from the simple image of a company putting its own shares into its own treasury or safe after it buys them back. Because they sit in the company's safe, these shares are 'not active in the market' and 'cannot vote', so the phrase now means shares the company holds itself rather than shares owned by outside investors.