Wednesday, February 21, 2007

U.K. Stocks Pay Europe's Highest Dividends, Fail to Lure Buyers

Stock investors who hunt for high yields in Europe are looking everywhere except the U.K., where companies pay the biggest dividends in the world's major markets.

Britain's FTSE 100 Index is lagging behind the Dow Jones Euro Stoxx 50 Index, a benchmark for the euro region, for a third year. The pound's 13 percent rally against the dollar in the past 12 months and rising interest rates are weighing on earnings and share prices.

The slowdown in profit growth is enough to deter money managers even though FTSE 100 companies' dividend payments relative to share prices are 16 percent higher than those in the 13 countries sharing the euro, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Dividends for the FTSE 100 are two-thirds more than those of the Dow Jones Industrial Average in the U.S. and are almost quadruple those of Japan's Nikkei-225 Stock Average

Read more at Bloomberg.com

No comments: