One more time. The claim I was responding to was that it really was NOT a "buyback" by TALK but instead UMS buying TALK shares prior to the merger. If that were the case, it WOULD be subject to 13D reporting. But there is no 13D, thus no purchases.
And there is no buyback. TALK is legally prohibited from buying even a single share. They are an SEC registrant. They just can't do what they want, when they want. They have to follow the law.
There is no buyback. Instead, those billion shares were almost certainly share dumps timed with the announcement of the potential merger, which drove volume to dump into.