January 2018
Beginner
976 pages
142h 14m
English
LG1
At quarterly or semiannual meetings, a firm’s board of directors decides whether and in what amount to pay cash dividends. If the firm has already established a precedent of paying dividends, the decision facing the board is usually whether to maintain or increase the dividend, and that decision is based primarily on the firm’s recent performance and its ability to generate cash flow in the future. Boards rarely cut dividends unless they believe that the firm’s ability to generate cash is in serious jeopardy. Figure 14.3 shows the percentage of U.S. dividend-paying companies that increased, decreased, or maintained their dividend payment each year from 1960 to 2016. The figure excludes dividend-payers ...
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