Aftermath: Dividends and Year

aftermath: Regular dividends have risen every year since the aftermath of the global financial crisis in 2009, according to The Guardian. Between that year and 2018, total dividends paid to shareholders grew by 85%. FCA plans to ban or cap investment platform exit fees Read more Frances O'Grady, the TUC general secretary, said the figures underlined the inequality between rewards for shareholders and workers, and said the economy needed to be redesigned to ensure everyone got a fair share. The payments rose 15.7% to 19.7bn, easily a first-quarter record, according to data tracked by Link Asset Services. The big increase in dividend income in the first quarter of 2019 was mainly driven by a 2.6bn special dividend from the FTSE 100 mining company BHP. The largest dividend payment in the quarter, at 2.9bn, was the oil company Royal Dutch Shell, while pharma company Astrazeneca, oil giant BP, Vodafone and British American Tobacco all paid out more than 1bn in the quarter. Michael Kempe, chief operating officer at Link Market Services, said the growth in dividends was in truth, a touch weaker than we expected on an underlying basis . He said 2019 was set for further increases in payouts to shareholders in spite of uncertainty about the global economy and Brexit negotiations in the UK. Link forecasts total annual UK dividend payments will break 100bn for the first time in 2019. Underlying dividends excluding specials grew slightly more slowly than Link expected, up 5.5% to 17.6bn, boosted by fluctuations in currency values. (news.financializer.com). As reported in the news.