Apple Inc. is regarded over the past decade as the epitome of a growth company. At a shareholders' meeting in early 2010, Apple's co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs strongly reaffirmed that the company had no intentions to start paying a dividend, even though Apple had more than $50 billion in cash and short-term securities on its balance sheet. However, after Steve Jobs died in late 2011, the company's new CEO Tim Cook shifted gears; in early 2012, Apple established a dividend and announced a plan to repurchase shares of its stock. Apple returned over $275 billion to shareholders including $200 billion in share repurchases between August 2012 and March 2018. a) What types of firms do you think are less likely to distribute cash (either dividend payments or stock repurchases) to shareholders? b) Apple distributed cash to shareholders mainly through share repurchase. Please list three advantages of share repurchases over cash dividends payments. 1 1. 2. 3. c) On Jan 27, 2015, Apple Inc. declared to pay cash dividend on Feb 12. Whoever is listed as the owner of the stock on Feb 6 (i.e., Friday) will receive the dividend of $0.47 per share. What is the last date that you could buy the stock of Apple Inc. in order to get the dividend payment on Feb 12