Just a little DD to add to the 500M share retirement information:
Someone on the forum was asking previously if the ratio of common shares returned to the treasury to preferred shares was done at a 1:1 ratio. I e-mailed Val on this subject and he replied that the exchange was 500 million shares to 5 million preferred. This jives with the published Annual Report (Information and Disclosure Statement/23 Feb 11), which states that there were only 10,000,000 preferred shares authorized, with (at the time) zero shares of preferred stock outstanding.
He also confirmed (which I think many of us knew) that he had owned 550 million shares. With this retirement he will have 50 million shares in restricted stock.