Toyota to spend $3.5 billion on share buyback

Toyota, the world's largest automaker, said on Wednesday that it is to buy back as much as 1.89 per cent of its shares for 360 billion yen, or $3.5 billion, raiding a growing corporate cash chest for the first time in five years.

The Japanese carmaker said it will purchase up to 60 million shares over a 10-month period following the next shareholders' meeting in June.

It will cancel half of them to avoid sparking fears of dilution in future share sales, the company said in a statement.

The other shares will be handed over to a trust that will manage them on behalf of a new foundation to "support efforts to address mobility challenges around the world" such as traffic jams and better use of energy, it said.

Last Toyota share buyback was in February 2009, a company spokeswoman said, adding it had repurchased 930,000 shares for 2.8 billion yen at the time.