SOUTH Africa’s largest retail bank, Absa, said on Wednesday that it will seek shareholder approval to buy back its own shares, but stressed that it has no immediate plans to execute such a scheme. A change in South African law earlier this year allows companies to purchase their own shares, provided they have the necessary shareholder approval. Absa may wish to use the scheme as a way to change its capital structure in management’s favour. The company wishes to decrease costly “tier one” capital, or shares in favour of “tier two” capital including debt. One way of achieving this would be to deplete tier one capital by repurchasing shares, which at the moment would involve amounts in the region of one billion rand.