It also aims to repurchase about $1.5 billion in shares.

Leggett & Platt expects to repurchase about 3 million to 6 million of its shares during the year.

UPS said it plans to repurchase about $2 billion of its shares this year, up from $800 million last year.

Lincolin National added that it intends to repurchase about $100 million to $125 million of stock before the end of the year.

Combined, the banks agreed to pay $250 million in fines and will repurchase about $27 billion of the debt from their clients.

Under the accelerated share repurchase agreement (ASR), Merck has agreed to repurchase about 99.5 million shares from Goldman Sachs based on current market prices.

The company also said it would move an additional $1 billion of share repurchases into 2010 and will repurchase about $5 billion for the year.

If the company bought shares at Wednesday's closing price of $51.28, it would be able to repurchase about 58 million shares, according to Reuters calculation.

The company repurchased about 14 percent of its stock in the past year.

It said it had repurchased about 1.575 million shares year to date.

It had purchased repurchased about $187.6 million of shares till August 12.

Elan has repurchased about $524 million worth of low-yield notes to cancel debt as part of its restructuring.

The company has repurchased about $4.7 million against the existing authorization.

It said it repurchased about $3.7 million of common stock in 2007 and 2008.

To date, it has repurchased about $490 million from its prior $500 million authorization.

The company said it has, since the beginning of 2006, repurchased about 7 percent of its shares.